If you have a junk car sitting around, you may be wondering what to do with it. You may think about restoring it someday or using it as a parts car if you could find a similar model. You may even consider parting out the car if you can make the time and figure out a good marketplace to sell the parts. In any case, getting rid of that junk car can save you from residential zoning fines, injuries to children, and the threat of toxic fluids seeping into your land. Junk cars are about as practical to keep around the home as a pile of asbestos and rusty bear traps. Let’s consider some ways to make money from your junk car in greater detail, below.
#1: Make Car Sculptures
source: critiquecollective.com
If you have some fabrication experience, you may be able to take pieces off your aging junker and turn them into art deco gold. Junk sculptures have a unique fan following in big cities like New York where people have loads of extra money to burn and are looking for something different to show off. Having a good eye for art and how to build trendy junk furniture can turn into a full-time hobby if you become good at it. Let your current junker be your first experiment.
See if you can turn the front-end into a love seat. Maybe you can take the emblems and design an interesting stool piece. Even pure scrap metal can be twisted, bent, welded, and contoured into amazing light fixtures and centerpieces. Most fabrication involves planning. You have to first start out with a sketch, a rough design of what the piece may look like when it is finished. You then have to map out the components, textures, and styles that you have to assemble to build it. Finally, you will have to use paper cut-outs to trace cut-out lines for the various pieces.
Building artwork out of junk is an experience. You can mix the car parts with other furniture pieces or pieces of chrome to accent it. The more work that you put into anything, the greater the eventual reward. Some people will obviously have more talent than others. Using tin snips, welding equipment, professional painting equipment, and plasma cutters can open up a world of possibilities. Who knows, maybe someday you will have an exotic junk art gallery of your own full of Detroit’s most iconic automobiles living on in an afterlife as lamps, sofas, sectionals, and coffee tables.
#2: Put an Ad in the Classified Ads
source: consumerreports.org
If starting a new junk art deco furniture hobby isn’t in your future, you may be interested in finding the right buyer through the classified ads. This all depends on the quality of the junk car and whether someone has the same idea as you did to find a parts car to restore their own. Unfortunately, very few people have the time to invest into huge projects like these unless you have something special that is known for its track performance, collectability, or parts value. You may also find someone who is willing to gamble on fixing it if the price is low enough and the problems are mechanical in nature. You may wind up wasting more money on advertising than you would if you simply got rid of it.
#3: Auction it Off
source: thepennyhoarder.com
You probably won’t find a local auction house that is willing to take it. However, you may be able to list it on online auction websites. Yet, do online auctions even work anymore? In reality, few people actually bid on goods because a steady stream of deals constantly pours in. They would rather cheat the sellers as much as possible and game the auction system by placing sniper bids at the last second. If they don’t get it, they simply don’t care in most cases because they have firmly determined its objective value before setting the bids.
The idea of an auction to drive up bids requires people to get emotionally attached and psychologically caught up in a moment of irrational spending. When you take away the excitement and the outcome is too predictable, you are just getting robbed. This is especially the case because online auction sites encourage members to price the items low to encourage bidding. In reality, they want you to let go of that car or item for as low as possible to bloat up the value of their auction site as the place to land hot deals. They hammer you with fees and rarely meet your expectations.
#4: Put a For Sale Sign in the Window
source: videoblocks.com
We have all passed by a property and seen those homes that try to sell a car by putting a “For Sale” sign in the window. Sure, it seems like a good idea to park the car in front of the house and let all the road traffic eye it up. However, if there is no firm price pasted on it or other marketing to allow for drivers to make an immediate decision, they aren’t gonna waste their time unless they have some special attachment to the particular model. If you put a sign up that says you are selling the car because you are moving overseas, that may raise some interest because buyers would see the practical need for a quick sale even if the problems are slight. In most cases, however, we see these vehicles sitting out in the weather and getting worse by the day and less appealing to prospective buyers. If something is for sale, you need a price tag because no one wants to feel shystered.
#5: Pull the Parts and Sell Them
source: mccluskeyautomotive.com
If you have some free afternoons, a can of penetrating oil, a diverse set of tools, and some mechanical gloves to protect your hands, you may decide to start pulling parts yourself. And sure this all sounds fine until you realize that you don’t have anywhere to store the parts, sell them, or any idea of what to do with them. This is one of those poorly thought-out plans that rarely comes to fruition. Unless there are some gems on that car like performance upgrades that others may interested in buying, you will likely encounter a lot of resistance when you try to sell parts.
#6: Sell Your Vehicle to a Local Scrapyard
source: saga.co.uk
This may be one of the most convenient of the options. You don’t have to invest in a sign. You don’t have to haggle with people. You don’t have to pay for advertising or online auction fees. In fact, you don’t have to do anything at all if you go to certain junkyards like the Junkyard Dog online website. All you need to do is provide the year, make, model, mileage, and condition of the vehicle to get an offer. Then, whenever it is convenient, a tow truck can come to haul it away. The Junkyard Dog online website streamlines the process and makes it easy for people to get cash for the junk cars that no one else really wants.
Let’s face it, a junk car isn’t really worth that much on the private market. The people who appreciate the value most are places like Junkyard Dog online. They can recycle it for scrap metal instead of wasting their time trying to build fancy junkyard art deco pieces. They can pull any parts that may be of use to others and connect them with the people who need them.
