What are Black Book Car Prices?

You've most likely heard of yellow book and blue book prices, but have you ever heard of black book car prices? Many consumers haven't. Yellow book prices refer to the NADA price guide, published by the National Automobile Dealers Association. The blue book is of course the Kelley Blue Book Guide, which features prices similar to NADA. The Kelley Blue Book is commonly used by dealerships because the prices in the guide are usually higher than what you'll find in the NADA guide. The black book is the book used by those who shop at auction.

The black book is the only guide trusted for decades to reflect accurate wholesale prices of automobiles sold at auction. Vehicles at auction are surveyed and their selling values are averaged to get the values listed in the black book. You will see various categories in the black book. There are four conditions under which an automobile may fall -- Extra Clean, Clean, Average, or Rough. As you can imagine, Extra Clean is the finest quality and Rough is poor quality. The price not only depends upon the model, make and year of the vehicle but also these qualifications.

If you are looking to buy a car, the only time you should consult the black book is if you are buying at auction. While wholesale prices are often available to car dealers most consumers end up paying retail. That is, unless they attend the same auctions that car dealers attend. There are also bankruptcy auctions and police auctions where you can find wholesale prices on a variety of new and used vehicles. You may be able to find listings for such auctions in your local paper or even on the Internet.

Black book car prices represent the rock bottom price before the markup. The markup is an amount added to the price of the car to make the retail price. The profit made from a dealer is what is left after expenses and overhead are subtracted from the markup. The retail price of a vehicle is going to vary depending on many factors including condition, age and location. If you are going to be shopping at a dealership, your best bet is to use the Kelley Blue Book as this is likely what the dealership is going to go by as well.


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