by John C. Carpenter

Created on: June 24, 2009   Last Updated: July 08, 2009

How To Invest In Classic Cars - Learn And Have Fun At The Same Time

When you think of investing you think of long agonizing hours at your computer looking for that one thing that you won't lose money on, you don't think of having fan and enjoying the whole experience, but you could do just that with classic cars.

My experience is in classic muscle cars, but what I will tell you here applies to all classic cars in general, first you need to know there is a learning curve with this, as with every other thing that you do in your life, don't expect to be an expert over night.

Over the years classic muscle cars have given me a lot of joy and pleasure, and hopefully they'll do the same for you, a fair warning here is that it does get addictive, and your probably going to find it very hard to stop with them is you start.

Now we'll get in to the meat and potatoes of this article, I'm not going to sugar coat things here, if you don't do your studying and get over the learning curve, you will lose money investing in classic cars, chances are that you will lose on your first one.

Your need to learn what to look for, not every muscle car is a good investment, in my opinion your best off to study and learn all you can about a certain car, like a mustang, or a Camaro, every manufacture built special cars.

By special cars I mean cars like the Shellby mustang, the ZL1 Camaro, the Yenko Camaro, these aren't your typical muscle cars, there were very few of these cars ever built, and they are getting increasingly hard to find, when you do find one, you need to know if it's the real thing.

Obviously you can get a classic car appraiser to look at them for you if you don't want to get over the learning curve first, but these people don't came cheap, it all depends on how much money you have to spend on the car.

My best advise to you is to learn all you can about the car that you want to buy, get all of the books that you can find on the subject, there is a series of books called "by the numbers", and these are a must have series of books for your arsenal.

To be effective at investing in classic cars you need to know the numbers, it's an absolute must, the numbers are your best friend the more you know about them the better off you'll be as an investor in classic cars.

Everything on a classic cars has a number, on the engine alone you'll find RPO codes, date codes, casting number, and a few other codes that are very helpful, you need to know how to decode every number on the car.

Throughout the car you'll find other numbers like the vin code, the vin code contains a lot of information about the car, but it can't tell you the whole story, there are transmission tags, and rear end tags also, and GM even used a special tag known as a "Protect-O-Plate".

It is a must to master the tags if you want to invest in classic cars effectively, id you do things right you can make a lot of money investing in classic cars, some classic cars have gained over thirty times in value over the years.

You can't say that about most investments, most people feel really good to get a twelve percent return on their investment, how does fifteen, or twenty percent sound, because if you do your due diligence it is possible with classic cars.

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