blue book used car prices

Truth be told, the people who sell cars have a completely different way of determining the so-called Blue Book value of used cars than you do. Dealers, sales managers and front-line car salesmen, whether on the new or used lots, know that the values recorded in the Kelly Blue Book are just the starting point for determining a particular car's worth. The average Joe shopping for a used car seems to think the Blue Book figures are average prices or, worse yet, the minimum value of his particular vehicle.
A good car salesman will actually watch for the prospective buyers who show up carrying the Kelly book, as well as reams of printouts from Internet car-buying guides and "Car Buying for Beginners" paperbacks. Some salesmen will avoid these kinds of buyers, while others have actually developed sales techniques to fluster such "informed" shoppers and turn their Blue Books and web research against them.
Pros and cons
The subtitle is meant to suggest that, among care salesmen, there are both honest professionals and clever con men. Private party buyers and sellers of used cars often forget that car salesmen are professionals who hone their skills (and, for some, their trickery) on a daily basis. The unprepared couple trying to get a good deal on their trade-in and drive off with a good deal are completely outgunned by the pro salesmen.
It is a truism of the auto business, and not even debatable, that the worst way to sell your used car is to a dealer, or to trade it in, which is actually the same thing. Dealers have to allow for refurbishing the car and reselling it at a profit, if it's even a good enough auto to bother with. It is much more common for dealers just to foist these cars off on wholesalers and let them hassle with it all. This is not the way for a private party to get the maximum moolah for his used car.
The process is not made any easier by consulting the Kelly Blue Book. These are speculative numbers to begin with, as they represent ideal situations with specific sets of circumstances frozen in time at a certain point, a recipe for inaccuracy if there ever was one. The fact that such a book even exists tends to make people think that they can just flip it open, turn to the right page and get the right number. Wrong.
The only proper way to get a correct valuation of your used car is to consult professionals who stay abreast of car prices on a daily basis, and know how to factor in condition, geography, paint color, mileage, model demand and a host of other variables. It is not something you can do in 20 minutes with an Internet connection and Google. If you work hard at it, of course you can learn, but be prepared to put some time into gaining that experience and expertise.
The more you know the better
The Kelly Blue Book is hardly the only information source about used car values. Much more up-to-the-minute information is in a million different places, all around you, but if you don't work in the field and know how to collect (and make sense of) all the confusing data and figures and prices, you will just go around and around and never land on the right number.
And, of course, people never determine what they will pay for a car by having someone else, whether the name's Kelly or Smith, tell them what the price will be. An "expert" opinion about certain makes or models in general is just not the same thing as the prospective seller's and buyer's opinions about the specific car being haggled over.
Do your homework, consult knowledgeable friends and acquaintances (like your mechanic), conduct some online research and collect as much information as you can on the car(s) you are considering purchasing. This article is not about how to negotiate with the car salesman, which you need to study about, too. But this article should have prepared you to get prepared, in a manner of speaking. You now know that buying that little blue book is not going to do much to save you money on your next used car purchase, and you have some direction on how to proceed. By all means, proceed!

After founding his first security firm in 1990, Scott McQuarrie built several security-related companies into regional and national powerhouses over the ensuing years. Since 2000 he has focused his sales and marketing efforts on the Internet, which opened up a virtually unlimited, international market for his flagship product line, EZWatch Pro.
The EZWatch Pro brand has come to stand for world-class expertise in electronic security, video surveillance and the myriad technologies involved in both fields. From small houses to gigantic international airports, there is an EZWatch Pro solution to meet any and every residential, business, commercial and government security challenge.

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