have you checked his feedback? He's seems to be doing quite well off it. I bought a new vent flap off him, perhaps 5 months ago. It was new & complete & i paid a tenner as a 'Buy it now' price. Tres resonable thought i. He dropped me an email to say he had a few other bits & was i interested. Since then he's been buying up 'CVS' off eBay (& elsewhere by the looks of it) & breaking them up & flogging the bits on at, as you've pointed out, Will, very rich prices.

I think that this will be happening increasingly often. Fewer cars about means prices are going up, spares cars are getting quite scarce.

....and what was once a spares car is now a restoration project in the waiting.

I'd have thought it was going more the other way. What used to be a viable restoration project is now an irretrievable spares car.

Sorry but no, it's not happening that way at all, prices are high, but not because late model 2cvs are hard to find or rare. My theory behind the prices rising is that the wholesale 'restoration' of 2cvs means these slapdash rebuilds are being touted by the companies doing them for large sums, so they can make a decent profit, so people seem to be assuming that as a shiny 2cv is worth £8000, a wreck must be worth at least a grand.

'Rarity' doesn't come into it, because 2cvs are not hard to find, and there are plenty of shitboxes left about. Even the scarcest of 2cvs (ripples, early 60's cars etc) are not worth a bean and can be picked up in better condition generally. 'Percieved rarity' might have something to do with it.

Would you genuinely pay over £300 for an engine? or at least, a secondhand engine with no garuntee or new parts? I wouldn't, and I wouldn't have the bare faced cheek to ask that much for one either.

Fair enough to this fella though, if he can get that kind of money for the stuff he's selling, then I don't see why he shouldnt. What annoys me is that other people will assume that's market value and start charging stupid prices for rubbish.

It certainly is a strange time with prices.

I guess I have been lucky as the 5 complete 2CVs I currently have cost me £150 for one of the Jade ones...21 years ago, Bamboo was £75, P & C - a Doolly (ha !)- was £50 as was both the REd and White and the other Jade....but I have had all these vehicles for years and prior to this I have been given several complete cars (I guess about 8 free ones over the years) and brought many for for £50-£100.

Because of the prices then, and the availability, I am totally ashamed to admit I have broken so many 2CVs because it wasnt worth restoring them.

I see exactly where Russ is coming from, its amazing to see super-dooper restored cars by the "specialits" at twice the price Citroen could ever sell them for. If indeed they really are a nut and bolt amazing job and someone has the cash and doesnt want to get dirty then fine. I have seen some £5000 cars that are very average and that doesnt seem right. The days of a £50 rot box are certainly over, but that doesnt mean we should simply stick a zero on that and be paying £500 for a pile of rubbish....I was offered one of those only last week....it had a few months MOT....but was abismal.....it was held together by pop rivets.I would have to have worked full time on it for a month to re-MOT it...and then it would be worth ....well not my time.....or the chassis and all the other parts

At the end of the day if someone is actually doing well selling both cars and parts at silly prices and people are buying then good luck to them....its legal.

This to me has allways been a hobby (exept those few mad months last summer whilst holding the keys to Julien Fords old empire, when I had to think money and workshop costs)...I would be happy to give someone stuff if it helped them and often have and often have recieved it from other 2CVers. The fun of it is that is playing with bits of metal at cheap prices....

OK.....I think I got a bit hot and bothered there.....sorry....preaching to the converted.....off my chest....

Trouble is, you do the sums about the price of parts that have gone into it, work out how much is left for labour, then divide that by the number of hours required to do that "nut and bolt amazing job" - and when you end up somewhere south of minimum wage, you wonder quite how they could possibly do it...

Yup, it creates an unrealistic view of the market, which we are kinda starting to see at the moment,or at least on ebay where people do seem to bid crazy amounts for pure tat.
Whilst I don't particularly agree with the dismatling of 'savable'* 2cv's just to make money on the parts, if someone is mad/desperate enough to pay ridiculous amounts for the bits then it's up to them. I won't be though.

*Savable being purely subjective of course, what is a do-able to one person can be totally unrepairable to someone else

<thinks back to Economics 'O' level>

If the supply and demand curves meet at that point, with roughly equal numbers of sellers happy to sell for that price and numbers of buyers willing to buy for that price, then surely that IS the "realistic market value"...?

It might not be a price you or I would be willing to buy (or sell) at, but the basic laws of economics don't give much of a flying toss about your or my feelings, I'm afraid.

If you would like to protest your disgust and fundamental disagreement with that, then I'll be more than happy to help you rid yourself of any portraits of Adam Smith you may happen to find yourself in possession of. <whistles innocently>

Your van being a fine example.