On Sep 22, 2008, at 11:18 AM, gwnc59a wrote:

> I recently (3 weeks ago) purchased a 2008 Prius. I didn't trade in my
> 2005 Prius at the time because i thought i could do better privately.
> So far no luck. Does anyone in the group have any suggestions on
> what approach i should take in selling this car? I have run a small
> ad in my local paper and the Globe and a larger ad in Auto Trader. If
> anyone has any suggestions, I would love to hear them.
> I purposely have not given any details on the car because I don't want
> to use this forum as a classified ad.

My wife wanted to sell her 1996 car last month. As best she could
tell from answering the questions on its condition at one of the
online used-car sites, the "private sale" price was about $1000. She
listed it on craigslist and very promptly got two replies, one of
which resulted in a sale for $800. (The other said he was willing to
pay $1000 but didn't show and rescheduled and didn't show again...)

A few years ago I sold another old car at a $1,000 buy-it-now price
via eBay Motors. The listing of course disappears when someone agrees
to buy it at that price. The listing disappeared so quickly that I
honestly thought I'd done something wrong and it hadn't gotten
listed, but in reality it had sold within hours. However, even though
I said firmly in the listing that the buyer must come to my house to
pick up the car, the buyer called and asked which local airport would
be better for me pick him up at! I went through the sale anyway.

So both of these channels are very effective ways to sell old, cheap
cars. I don't know how well they'd work with a 2005 Prius.

--
Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith@...
"Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is now back in print!
Sample chapter at http://world.std.com/~dpbsmith/messy.html
Buy it at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403314063/