During the past five years, my wife and I had little use for two cars. I worked from home (or not at all), she drove very little and we almost never drove both cars simultaneously. Now that she’s gone, I planned to sell her car.
I’ve got my 2004 Scion 9 (the Toaster) with 88,000 miles on it that I love and am keeping. Her 1999 Accord V6 with 62,000 miles can dust every other vehicle on the highway but I planned to sell it anyway.
Both cars have their fair share of dents and dings but are in fantastic mechanical shape. I calculated their resale value to be around $3-4K each.
My only hesitation was that if my Scion got wrecked, I’d be kicking myself for getting rid of the Accord.
But what am I going to do with 2 cars? I’d rather free up space in the garage and save $800 in car insurance each year.
So today I requested an online appraisal from Autonation and made an appointment with Carmax.
Autonation offered me only five hundred bucks for the Accord!
I figured that Autonation and Carmax would offer similar prices. Before wasting my time going to Carmax I did some research. Imagine my surprise to learn Carmax was offering only $1-2K for 1999 Accords ten years ago! There’s no way they’d be offering that much to me today. So I cancelled my Carmax appointment.
Then I looked at Craigslist and saw 1999 Accords listed for $1K.
I don’t really want to deal with the hassle of trying to sell my car via Craigslist – especially for less than $1K.
I know it’s hard to find a low mileage, good car that’s been well maintained for a few thousand bucks.
To me, having a backup car is worth more than $500 I could sell it for. So for now, I’m keeping both.