Tom Fair of North Kingstown, a licensed broker and expert in auto valuations, was one of the panel members for the first Collector Car Series discussion at the Larz Anderson Auto Museum in Brookline, Mass., last week.

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The Providence Journal / Steve Szydlowski

BROOKLINE, Mass. The theme of a recent seminar on buying collectible cars at the Larz Anderson Auto Museum was a simple caveat emptor, or “Let the buyer beware.”

Especially at auction where preparation was cited as the most important defense against being sucked into either paying too much for a car or buying a car you don’t really want.

Moderator Donald Osborne, a contributing editor at Sports Car Market Magazine and an independent appraiser, led a panel of five experts in an extended and often amusing discussion of the pros and cons of the various ways of buying vintage vehicles.

The collectible car market is a huge business, with some 15,500 cars selling at auction last year for a total of $880 million, said Nathan Schindler of Joseph E. Schindler Insurance Agency, in Burlington, Mass.

“And that’s 15-to-20 percent of a $6 billion market,” he said.

While there was some discussion of buying from brokers and dealers, as well as through private parties, the discussion focused on the joys and pitfalls of buying and selling at auction, whether live or online.

“Know your (spending) limit,” advised Steven Posner, CEO of Putnam Leasing, Stamford, Conn., which specializes in leases for high-priced, collectible vehicles. “You can really get caught up in the excitement of the sale.”

Posner said he has been in the collectible car business for 30 years and no longer gets excited by every vintage car he sees.

“But at an auction I go crazy,” he said, adding that he has taken a number of cars that he had regretted buying to panelist Stuart Carpenter, who owns Copely Motorcars in Needham, Mass., a dealership that trades in specialty cars, especially Land Rovers and Mercedes Benz.

For his part, Carpenter said he could not resist buying Austin Healeys even though he was having a tough time selling them at his dealership.

“Some cars I cannot sell,” he said. “I love Austin Healeys but cannot sell them out of my showroom.”

Overall, the panel agreed that it was crucial to do one’s homework before bidding at an auction and to keep one’s emotions under control.

“Know the car before you get there,” said Nick Candee of Aston Martin of New England, adding that determining the right price included comparing recent auction sales prices in such publications as Sports Car Market Magazine and talking to people who know the car. “The worst way to buy a car is in a hurry.”

“It’s all preparation — there’s no science to it,” said Carpenter, adding that even with all the preparation he does, “as soon as the hammer falls, I start worrying – did I pay too much, has the car got problems I don’t know about?”

Osborne said it was important to read between the lines of descriptions of cars in auction catalogs.

“If a description is more than half general information about the history of the marque, either the owner does not know (about the car) or does not want you to know,” he said, noting that the descriptions are supplied by the sellers.

He said it was a good idea to ask the auction house for a Specialist Condition Report, which is an independent survey commissioned by the auction house.

“It’s free and not from the consigner,” he said.

“Buy the best car you can buy,” added Candee, noting that many buyers buy a car in need of restoration in the hope of turning “a toad into a fairy princess,” but end up spending more money than if they had bought a restored car in the first place.

“Let the other guy do the restoration, then buy the car,” said Posner, although Osborne noted that “some people do love restoring and then selling the car.”

Osborne also warned of the various shenanigans that can occur at auctions, including “chandelier bidding,” where the auctioneer announces bids that appear to come from the light fixtures in an effort to boost the prices, and “beards,” or ringers that bid the price up on behalf of the seller. He said the latter term comes from agricultural auctions where one farmer would be selling his livestock and a friend would don a beard as a disguise and bid the price up artificially.

“You’ll find you’re bidding against your own checkbook,” said Tom Fair, laughing. Fair is a licensed broker based in Newport who formerly sold Bentleys at Inskip.

Osborne also noted that if an auction house permits the seller to have a reserve price below which it will not sell, that price “cannot be higher than the low estimate.”

While Carpenter said he now hardly goes to the big sales in Arizona such as Barrett-Jackson in person, preferring to follow them live online, Osborne warned against bidding on vehicles on such online bidding sites as eBay and Craigslist without doing proper research.

“You would not buy a house based on a photograph,” he said, “so why buy a car that way?”

He said if the car is across the country, a potential buyer should arrange for a survey by a licensed appraiser, but warned of having someone tell you that the car is not worth it while secretly negotiating to buy it on the spot.

Osborne also warned against going for the “Buy it Now!” price offered on eBay to dispense with the bidding process and nail down a sale.

“ ‘Buy it Now’ is a Hail Mary,” he said, miming a quarterback flinging a football all the way down the field in the hope of a miraculous catch in the end zone.

Fair said auctions are good for finding interested buyers but they carry risks for the seller as well as the buyer.

“You get two guys with a drink too many and they can push the price up,” he said, citing the recent sale of an Aston Martin for about $500,000. “There was no reason to pay that kind of money unless you had your first kiss in it in high school.”

At the same time, he said, the end of a sale might result in cars selling too cheap as few buyers are left to bid.

“It’s late at night and no one’s there, and cars are selling for nothing, 30 cents on the dollar,” he said.

Fair said the provenance, or history, of a car affects its value.

“A car with a rich racing heritage is going to be priced higher than an identical car which was owned by an orthodontist who raced it once,” he said.

Posner said his company can pre-approve leases at the site of the auction, and Schindler said his company, which specializes in arranging the insurance of collectibles – the company is responsible for insuring all the vehicles in the museum, for instance – can also insure on site.

Indeed, he advised insuring a vehicle “before it gets on the truck,” and Posner cited a lawsuit his company got involved in because a Lamborghini Diablo was damaged on route to the buyer and Putnam had arranged the leasing.

Using a broker like Fair to buy or sell classic cars might be a safer route, but he is hardly available for hire. Fair said he deals almost exclusively with people he knows, either the buyer or seller or both.

Copley is more available, as he has a showroom, but he said he also works from a network of contacts and much of his business in not local. Indeed, he said that much of his current business is coming from Europe due to the weak dollar.

“With the weak dollar, there’s a heck of a lot of business going back to Europe,” he said.

But perhaps the last word belonged to Osborne.

“Buy what you want, love and can afford,” he said. “You may pay 20 percent more, but if it fits your needs, then that is the right car for you.”

The seminar was the first in a series of four being presented by the Larz Anderson Auto Museum over the next couple of months. Pristine or Patina? Restoration vs. Preservation is scheduled for 7 p.m. on Thursday, May 22; Memorabilia: Appraising and Investing in Automobile and Motorcycle Memorabilia is slated for 7 p.m. on Thursday, June 19; and Purchasing and Using a Collectible Racecar is scheduled for 10 a.m. on Saturday, July 19.

Each lecture costs $50; half price to museum members.

For more information about the seminars and the museum, go to: www.motorsports

marketingresources.com and

www.larzanderson.org.

pelsworth@projo.com