The Value of Collectibility: A Collector Car's Journey

For me, an OEM seat is worth almost as much as the car itself. In fact, I've been fortunate enough to acquire a collector car that has all the features and tags that make it highly collectible. This car has Vint tags, which are not only aesthetically pleasing but also serve as proof of its authenticity. Additionally, there are vent tags all around the car that indicate if the vehicle has ever been in an accident.

What makes this car truly special is the extensive history it has accumulated over the years. There's damage on it from a bicycle fall at Roger's nephew's house, which I've decided to leave intact as it adds character to the vehicle. The story goes that Roger's nephew fell off his bicycle and crashed into the car. To repair the damage, Roger had the car taken to a shop where they changed the fuel filters, among other services.

However, when I ran a Carfax report on this car, I was shocked to discover that the mileage listed was 19,000 miles, whereas my own car with the same VIN number has only 43,000 miles. It turned out that the shop had mistakenly recorded the wrong VIN number, which led to incorrect service records being generated for this vehicle.

I called the shop to inform them of the mistake and to ask how they came to record the wrong VIN number in the first place. The answer was that they must have had my 143,000-mile car in their system previously, as that was the only way they could have obtained the incorrect information. However, there were no service records for this vehicle at the shop, making it difficult to understand how the mistake occurred.

The consequences of this mistake are significant. As a collector car owner, low mileage is crucial to maintaining its value and desirability. Adding 120,000 miles to the car's already high mileage will likely reduce its value significantly. The fact that the Carfax report lists the vehicle as having only 19,000 miles creates confusion among potential buyers, who may assume it has been properly maintained or even restored.

The solution to this problem lies in verifying the true mileage of the vehicle and ensuring that all records are accurate. I plan to contact Carfax again to see if they can provide any insight into how the mistake occurred and whether they can help me resolve the issue. If someone with a connection at Carfax is available, I would appreciate their assistance in straightening out this mess.

For now, I'll keep both cars in my garage, one with 43,000 miles and the other with incorrect mileage. It's a frustrating situation, but one that could have been avoided if accurate records had been kept from the start. If you're interested in purchasing one of these vehicles, please contact me at Rob@upspeed.com to discuss further. I'll make sure to get one thing sorted before putting it up for sale, and then we can work on freeing up some space in my garage.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enall right guys Rob for ready here and starting to move some cars but the one car that I'm really concerned about moving that I've been talking about moving for years now is my Supra and I don't know if you guys know the story about my Supra but let me show you over here back here is my 1998 Toyota Supra now this is the second cool car I've ever owned and I bought it in pieces and when I say I bought it in pieces it was purchased by um somebody who sold it to Dave Dave then took it apart and he was going to modify it and do all this stuff he did not and then Roger bought it from him Roger sat on it for a bunch of years than I bought it from Roger now this car has spent a good portion of its life either parked going very very fast or in pieces and it's in like a a combination State at the moment now I've told you that I don't think Supras should be worth $300,000 I I don't really believe in collector cars let's put it that way I think cars are they have a value in what they provide this I always knew was going to be a great car people laughed at me when I told them it was going to be a $100,000 car one day everyone's get out of here loser and now you'd be hard pressed to find a decent example for less than $100,000 sure there's many different variants and many different things that go into sua values there there's the year there's the uh if it was a base model if it was a naturally aspirated car or a turbo car if it's right-hand drive or left-hand drive it's automatic not automatic taret or or hardtop there's so many different factors that go in but one of the biggest factors you're going to have is the year and this is a 1998 the 1998 is the rarest it's got the small production volume than uh to get a 98 six-speed taret and these cars were never going to be like people buy Ferraris and they look at them for their whole lives they don't buy Supras to look at them their whole lives they buy them and they drive them and they were cheap and they were modable so people would buy them put a bunch of miles on them go on eBay and fix them up as cheap as they could cars that make it through that for whatever reason mine has a story that it made it through its lifetime because it was taken apart and we just never got around to putting it back together because this was really a Humpty Dumpty when I bought it it had all the parts but they were scattered all around so we had to literally go through Source the the OEM parts that were missing but then when you Source the part boom I find it in a pile Oh we actually have this right here it's right so it just one of those things that putting all those pieces together took a while I didn't get this car running in I until I think 2009 now this car has 19,000 Mi on it right now and I'm like you know you know what the values are really starting to take off I should probably sell this like there's no reason this car should cost as much as a new Lamborghini but I said I also really like it and if I'm going to sell it I'm going to get another one but I don't care about this car because it's got low mileage I care about this car cuz I like this car so I found another one and I bought another one and then I built another one to the same way I wanted this one so I spent about $100,000 plus the purchase of the car to build a second car which is a 95 automatic that I swapped over I did that out of petrol Works they're it's a different story but uh they should be done with that car soon and it's time to sort of get rid of this one now you'll see a couple of things are missing on this I've got my 98 headlights are over in my 95 because the headlights on the 95 were yellow and I was using the 95 to film out in Vegas for a show called banging gears then you have just the little things that are missing in here which is like the center console and then the rear seat which the rear seat is actually right there but uh the car is together like the car drives I just the battery's disconnected right now but you'll see stuff that you don't normally see is like a super clean interior these Interiors when you see them online unless they've been refinished which nobody refinishes super Interiors well I don't know why you can always tell it's refinished to get a good OEM seat is worth almost as much as the car in my opinion but um this car has everything that makes it collectible it's got the Vint tags now there's vent tags all around the car to show if the car has ever been in an accident not only has this car not been in an accident this car has all its Vint tags and I've left the damage on it which when I show you the damage it's got the ancillary uh like moving around the garage damage on it and then down here is the most notable this was Roger's nephew or something like that fell on it with his bicycle see right there and like that stuff I'm leaving in the car cuz at least then it doesn't have any paint work but I was like all right now that I've got my other car situated there's no reason for me to sit on two that was the reason that I got the second one and so I could sell the first one and then we start going through the process to get rid of the sell it and I find the biggest oops I've probably experienced in my life which is they ran the Carfax and uh the mileage on my Carfax on this one is it 19,000 it's at uh 143,000 now conveniently that's the mileage in which I purchased my other car so remember when I brought my other car when I was trying to get it running we had this whole thing down in DC where we picked it up and towed it up and I had the guy change the fuel filters and all that stuff well they put that service on this VIN number yeah that's a huge oop so I call him up and I go we can't change that yeah and I'm like well you have to change that cuz now people are going to think my car's got 143,000 Mi on it when it doesn't this car and I don't even remember why I ever had this car at that shop but there's no other service records at that shop from this car so they had that VIN number in the system the only way they would have got had that VIN this VIN number is if I had this car at their shop previously which they didn't log that service but they logged the 143,000 M service on this car and now I have to try to figure out how to deal with that because obviously the value in a collector car is the low miles the value that you lose is when you add 120,000 miles or it looks like the car is now a roll back because you're advertising something with 19,000 Mi even though it has 19,000 miles but the records have a conflicting uh report which the conflicting report is it would make it something that's called a tmu a true mileage unnown and a lot of the subsequent um registrations on it so the first owner as I said sold it to Dave Dave sold it to Roger but Roger never registered it then he sold it to me who registered it but I registered it through a leasing company CU I leased it for a couple of years then it went from the leasing company to my personal name and then I put it into my Montana company so that's the ownership lineage on this car but it's probably pretty maddening to to be not probably it's very maddening to be in a situation where where guys like what do you want me to do what do you mean what do I want you to do I didn't want you to put the wrong VIN number no we didn't put the wrong VIN number I'm like you put the wrong VIN number this car wasn't there you had my 143,000 Mi car that's the one you worked on it was not this one I don't know where you got this VIN number from but you've now caused me quite the headache so if somebody has a connection at Carfax I've got both cars that you can come look at the both VIN numbers it's it's the the timing lines up the videos document it if somebody's a Carfax and that can help straighten this out I would appreciate it because that's a very frustrating thing I can't sell this car until I fix that because that is something you can't get around like having something where the mileage is off by not not like R it's off by 1,000 it's off by 120,000 it's ridiculous it's very frustrating but that is the problem I find myself in if you're interested in this car uh before I run it through an auction just shoot me an email Rob atup speed.com and uh we'll get one thing sorted and then we'll get this thing out of here and free up some space in the garage thank you guys for watching Rob fry help me somebody at Carfax see you soon I'll let you know how it goesall right guys Rob for ready here and starting to move some cars but the one car that I'm really concerned about moving that I've been talking about moving for years now is my Supra and I don't know if you guys know the story about my Supra but let me show you over here back here is my 1998 Toyota Supra now this is the second cool car I've ever owned and I bought it in pieces and when I say I bought it in pieces it was purchased by um somebody who sold it to Dave Dave then took it apart and he was going to modify it and do all this stuff he did not and then Roger bought it from him Roger sat on it for a bunch of years than I bought it from Roger now this car has spent a good portion of its life either parked going very very fast or in pieces and it's in like a a combination State at the moment now I've told you that I don't think Supras should be worth $300,000 I I don't really believe in collector cars let's put it that way I think cars are they have a value in what they provide this I always knew was going to be a great car people laughed at me when I told them it was going to be a $100,000 car one day everyone's get out of here loser and now you'd be hard pressed to find a decent example for less than $100,000 sure there's many different variants and many different things that go into sua values there there's the year there's the uh if it was a base model if it was a naturally aspirated car or a turbo car if it's right-hand drive or left-hand drive it's automatic not automatic taret or or hardtop there's so many different factors that go in but one of the biggest factors you're going to have is the year and this is a 1998 the 1998 is the rarest it's got the small production volume than uh to get a 98 six-speed taret and these cars were never going to be like people buy Ferraris and they look at them for their whole lives they don't buy Supras to look at them their whole lives they buy them and they drive them and they were cheap and they were modable so people would buy them put a bunch of miles on them go on eBay and fix them up as cheap as they could cars that make it through that for whatever reason mine has a story that it made it through its lifetime because it was taken apart and we just never got around to putting it back together because this was really a Humpty Dumpty when I bought it it had all the parts but they were scattered all around so we had to literally go through Source the the OEM parts that were missing but then when you Source the part boom I find it in a pile Oh we actually have this right here it's right so it just one of those things that putting all those pieces together took a while I didn't get this car running in I until I think 2009 now this car has 19,000 Mi on it right now and I'm like you know you know what the values are really starting to take off I should probably sell this like there's no reason this car should cost as much as a new Lamborghini but I said I also really like it and if I'm going to sell it I'm going to get another one but I don't care about this car because it's got low mileage I care about this car cuz I like this car so I found another one and I bought another one and then I built another one to the same way I wanted this one so I spent about $100,000 plus the purchase of the car to build a second car which is a 95 automatic that I swapped over I did that out of petrol Works they're it's a different story but uh they should be done with that car soon and it's time to sort of get rid of this one now you'll see a couple of things are missing on this I've got my 98 headlights are over in my 95 because the headlights on the 95 were yellow and I was using the 95 to film out in Vegas for a show called banging gears then you have just the little things that are missing in here which is like the center console and then the rear seat which the rear seat is actually right there but uh the car is together like the car drives I just the battery's disconnected right now but you'll see stuff that you don't normally see is like a super clean interior these Interiors when you see them online unless they've been refinished which nobody refinishes super Interiors well I don't know why you can always tell it's refinished to get a good OEM seat is worth almost as much as the car in my opinion but um this car has everything that makes it collectible it's got the Vint tags now there's vent tags all around the car to show if the car has ever been in an accident not only has this car not been in an accident this car has all its Vint tags and I've left the damage on it which when I show you the damage it's got the ancillary uh like moving around the garage damage on it and then down here is the most notable this was Roger's nephew or something like that fell on it with his bicycle see right there and like that stuff I'm leaving in the car cuz at least then it doesn't have any paint work but I was like all right now that I've got my other car situated there's no reason for me to sit on two that was the reason that I got the second one and so I could sell the first one and then we start going through the process to get rid of the sell it and I find the biggest oops I've probably experienced in my life which is they ran the Carfax and uh the mileage on my Carfax on this one is it 19,000 it's at uh 143,000 now conveniently that's the mileage in which I purchased my other car so remember when I brought my other car when I was trying to get it running we had this whole thing down in DC where we picked it up and towed it up and I had the guy change the fuel filters and all that stuff well they put that service on this VIN number yeah that's a huge oop so I call him up and I go we can't change that yeah and I'm like well you have to change that cuz now people are going to think my car's got 143,000 Mi on it when it doesn't this car and I don't even remember why I ever had this car at that shop but there's no other service records at that shop from this car so they had that VIN number in the system the only way they would have got had that VIN this VIN number is if I had this car at their shop previously which they didn't log that service but they logged the 143,000 M service on this car and now I have to try to figure out how to deal with that because obviously the value in a collector car is the low miles the value that you lose is when you add 120,000 miles or it looks like the car is now a roll back because you're advertising something with 19,000 Mi even though it has 19,000 miles but the records have a conflicting uh report which the conflicting report is it would make it something that's called a tmu a true mileage unnown and a lot of the subsequent um registrations on it so the first owner as I said sold it to Dave Dave sold it to Roger but Roger never registered it then he sold it to me who registered it but I registered it through a leasing company CU I leased it for a couple of years then it went from the leasing company to my personal name and then I put it into my Montana company so that's the ownership lineage on this car but it's probably pretty maddening to to be not probably it's very maddening to be in a situation where where guys like what do you want me to do what do you mean what do I want you to do I didn't want you to put the wrong VIN number no we didn't put the wrong VIN number I'm like you put the wrong VIN number this car wasn't there you had my 143,000 Mi car that's the one you worked on it was not this one I don't know where you got this VIN number from but you've now caused me quite the headache so if somebody has a connection at Carfax I've got both cars that you can come look at the both VIN numbers it's it's the the timing lines up the videos document it if somebody's a Carfax and that can help straighten this out I would appreciate it because that's a very frustrating thing I can't sell this car until I fix that because that is something you can't get around like having something where the mileage is off by not not like R it's off by 1,000 it's off by 120,000 it's ridiculous it's very frustrating but that is the problem I find myself in if you're interested in this car uh before I run it through an auction just shoot me an email Rob atup speed.com and uh we'll get one thing sorted and then we'll get this thing out of here and free up some space in the garage thank you guys for watching Rob fry help me somebody at Carfax see you soon I'll let you know how it goesall right guys Rob for ready here and starting to move some cars but the one car that I'm really concerned about moving that I've been talking about moving for years now is my Supra and I don't know if you guys know the story about my Supra but let me show you over here back here is my 1998 Toyota Supra now this is the second cool car I've ever owned and I bought it in pieces and when I say I bought it in pieces it was purchased by um somebody who sold it to Dave Dave then took it apart and he was going to modify it and do all this stuff he did not and then Roger bought it from him Roger sat on it for a bunch of years than I bought it from Roger now this car has spent a good portion of its life either parked going very very fast or in pieces and it's in like a a combination State at the moment now I've told you that I don't think Supras should be worth $300,000 I I don't really believe in collector cars let's put it that way I think cars are they have a value in what they provide this I always knew was going to be a great car people laughed at me when I told them it was going to be a $100,000 car one day everyone's get out of here loser and now you'd be hard pressed to find a decent example for less than $100,000 sure there's many different variants and many different things that go into sua values there there's the year there's the uh if it was a base model if it was a naturally aspirated car or a turbo car if it's right-hand drive or left-hand drive it's automatic not automatic taret or or hardtop there's so many different factors that go in but one of the biggest factors you're going to have is the year and this is a 1998 the 1998 is the rarest it's got the small production volume than uh to get a 98 six-speed taret and these cars were never going to be like people buy Ferraris and they look at them for their whole lives they don't buy Supras to look at them their whole lives they buy them and they drive them and they were cheap and they were modable so people would buy them put a bunch of miles on them go on eBay and fix them up as cheap as they could cars that make it through that for whatever reason mine has a story that it made it through its lifetime because it was taken apart and we just never got around to putting it back together because this was really a Humpty Dumpty when I bought it it had all the parts but they were scattered all around so we had to literally go through Source the the OEM parts that were missing but then when you Source the part boom I find it in a pile Oh we actually have this right here it's right so it just one of those things that putting all those pieces together took a while I didn't get this car running in I until I think 2009 now this car has 19,000 Mi on it right now and I'm like you know you know what the values are really starting to take off I should probably sell this like there's no reason this car should cost as much as a new Lamborghini but I said I also really like it and if I'm going to sell it I'm going to get another one but I don't care about this car because it's got low mileage I care about this car cuz I like this car so I found another one and I bought another one and then I built another one to the same way I wanted this one so I spent about $100,000 plus the purchase of the car to build a second car which is a 95 automatic that I swapped over I did that out of petrol Works they're it's a different story but uh they should be done with that car soon and it's time to sort of get rid of this one now you'll see a couple of things are missing on this I've got my 98 headlights are over in my 95 because the headlights on the 95 were yellow and I was using the 95 to film out in Vegas for a show called banging gears then you have just the little things that are missing in here which is like the center console and then the rear seat which the rear seat is actually right there but uh the car is together like the car drives I just the battery's disconnected right now but you'll see stuff that you don't normally see is like a super clean interior these Interiors when you see them online unless they've been refinished which nobody refinishes super Interiors well I don't know why you can always tell it's refinished to get a good OEM seat is worth almost as much as the car in my opinion but um this car has everything that makes it collectible it's got the Vint tags now there's vent tags all around the car to show if the car has ever been in an accident not only has this car not been in an accident this car has all its Vint tags and I've left the damage on it which when I show you the damage it's got the ancillary uh like moving around the garage damage on it and then down here is the most notable this was Roger's nephew or something like that fell on it with his bicycle see right there and like that stuff I'm leaving in the car cuz at least then it doesn't have any paint work but I was like all right now that I've got my other car situated there's no reason for me to sit on two that was the reason that I got the second one and so I could sell the first one and then we start going through the process to get rid of the sell it and I find the biggest oops I've probably experienced in my life which is they ran the Carfax and uh the mileage on my Carfax on this one is it 19,000 it's at uh 143,000 now conveniently that's the mileage in which I purchased my other car so remember when I brought my other car when I was trying to get it running we had this whole thing down in DC where we picked it up and towed it up and I had the guy change the fuel filters and all that stuff well they put that service on this VIN number yeah that's a huge oop so I call him up and I go we can't change that yeah and I'm like well you have to change that cuz now people are going to think my car's got 143,000 Mi on it when it doesn't this car and I don't even remember why I ever had this car at that shop but there's no other service records at that shop from this car so they had that VIN number in the system the only way they would have got had that VIN this VIN number is if I had this car at their shop previously which they didn't log that service but they logged the 143,000 M service on this car and now I have to try to figure out how to deal with that because obviously the value in a collector car is the low miles the value that you lose is when you add 120,000 miles or it looks like the car is now a roll back because you're advertising something with 19,000 Mi even though it has 19,000 miles but the records have a conflicting uh report which the conflicting report is it would make it something that's called a tmu a true mileage unnown and a lot of the subsequent um registrations on it so the first owner as I said sold it to Dave Dave sold it to Roger but Roger never registered it then he sold it to me who registered it but I registered it through a leasing company CU I leased it for a couple of years then it went from the leasing company to my personal name and then I put it into my Montana company so that's the ownership lineage on this car but it's probably pretty maddening to to be not probably it's very maddening to be in a situation where where guys like what do you want me to do what do you mean what do I want you to do I didn't want you to put the wrong VIN number no we didn't put the wrong VIN number I'm like you put the wrong VIN number this car wasn't there you had my 143,000 Mi car that's the one you worked on it was not this one I don't know where you got this VIN number from but you've now caused me quite the headache so if somebody has a connection at Carfax I've got both cars that you can come look at the both VIN numbers it's it's the the timing lines up the videos document it if somebody's a Carfax and that can help straighten this out I would appreciate it because that's a very frustrating thing I can't sell this car until I fix that because that is something you can't get around like having something where the mileage is off by not not like R it's off by 1,000 it's off by 120,000 it's ridiculous it's very frustrating but that is the problem I find myself in if you're interested in this car uh before I run it through an auction just shoot me an email Rob atup speed.com and uh we'll get one thing sorted and then we'll get this thing out of here and free up some space in the garage thank you guys for watching Rob fry help me somebody at Carfax see you soon I'll let you know how it goes\n"