If you’ve got a classic to sell, you have more places to list it than ever. Bring a Trailer, Cars & Bids, Hemmings, eBay Motors, Facebook Marketplace, and a growing list of newer auction sites all want your car, and every one of them will tell you their audience is the one that pays. Most of the time you have to take that on faith. This time you don’t, because five classic American vehicles have now run on both Bring a Trailer and BuyTheCar, and we can put the results side by side.
On BuyTheCar, every one of the five was bid higher, by a combined $63,300, or 45 percent. Four of the five had failed to meet reserve on Bring a Trailer. The vehicles were the same, down to the VIN.
Three of the five Bring a Trailer auctions closed in 2026, within eleven weeks of the BuyTheCar result. The difference was who was looking, and that comes down to how each marketplace is built.
The five cars, side by side
| Vehicle | Bring a Trailer result | BuyTheCar result | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1949 Chevrolet 3800 custom pickup | Bid to $18,500, reserve not met (April 6, 2026) | Bid to $29,000, reserve not met (June 24, 2026) | +$10,500 |
| Custom 1939 Ford roadster | Bid to $25,000, reserve not met (July 25, 2026) | Sold after auction, $41,000 (July 2026) | +$16,000 |
| 540-powered 1971 Chevrolet Camaro | Sold, $55,000 (April 18, 2023) | Sold, $82,500 (May 1, 2026) | +$27,500 |
| 1954 Chevrolet 3100 pickup | Bid to $23,000, reserve not met (June 9, 2017) | Sold after auction, $28,000 (May 2026) | +$5,000 |
| 1964 Pontiac LeMans | Bid to $18,000, reserve not met (June 5, 2026) | Sold after auction, $22,300 (August 18, 2026) | +$4,300 |
| Total | $139,500 | $202,800 | +$63,300 |
Sources: each vehicle’s public result page on bringatrailer.com and buythecar.com, linked below.
The ’49 Chevy 3800. A 383 stroker under the hood, silver paint with gray flames, Mustang II front suspension, Ultraleather inside. On Bring a Trailer it drew 21 comments and bid to $18,500 on April 6. Ten weeks later the same truck ran on BuyTheCar, pulled 29 bids, and topped out at $29,000. That bid didn’t clear the seller’s reserve either, so the truck didn’t sell on BuyTheCar. It did draw $10,500 more for the same flames from a smaller crowd, which is the point of this article.
The ’39 Ford roadster is the one I’d show a skeptic. It’s a Coast to Coast fiberglass body with a removable hardtop, a crate 350, and a four-link rear. BuyTheCar’s bidders took it to $41,500 across 39 bids in the week ending July 15, short of the seller’s reserve. Ten days later, Bring a Trailer’s audience stopped at $25,000. The seller closed with a BuyTheCar bidder at $41,000, sixteen thousand above where Bring a Trailer stopped in the same month.
The ’71 Camaro is the outlier, because it sold on both sites, and three years apart. Bring a Trailer sold it for $55,000 on April 18, 2023, already carrying its Shafiroff Racing 540, Tremec five-speed, Moser 12-bolt, and Detroit Speed suspension. The buyer from that auction kept building it. By the time it hit BuyTheCar in April 2026, the listing described carbon fiber bumpers, spoilers, and rocker panels from Anvil Auto, LED lighting all around, Corbeau seats, a Flaming River tilt column, Wilwood six-piston front brakes, a side-exit exhaust, and a dual-battery sound system, with the engine rated at 676 horsepower on pump gas. The seller ran it at no reserve, and it sold for $82,500 after 24 bids. Some of that $27,500 gap is three years of parts and labor, and some of it is three years of market. I can’t tell you how much of each. What I can tell you is that a 676-horsepower second-gen Camaro found its buyer in a week on a site where every other listing is also a pre-1985 American car.
The ’54 Chevy 3100 has the longest gap of the five, and I’ll say so up front. Its Bring a Trailer run was in June 2017, nine years before the BuyTheCar listing, and the BuyTheCar listing describes a frame-off restoration completed in 2025. Live bidding on BuyTheCar reached $19,750 against the reserve. What got the truck to $28,000 was the post-auction process, which I cover below.
The ’64 LeMans has a 1964-spec 389 with Tri-Power carburetion and PHS documentation. Bring a Trailer bid it to $18,000 on June 5. On BuyTheCar in August, 28 bids reached $16,500, the reserve held, and the seller and that same high bidder closed at $22,300 after the clock ran out. That’s $4,300 above where Bring a Trailer’s bidders quit, 74 days earlier.
Three of the five beat their Bring a Trailer number in live bidding, and one of those three still didn’t clear its reserve. The other two beat it in what BuyTheCar does after the auction ends.
Who is looking at your car
Bring a Trailer runs over 1,000 listings a week for more than 750,000 registered bidders and 1.6 million registered users, according to its About page. The same page says “anything interesting is welcome here, from inexpensive project cars to multi-million-dollar collector pieces,” including “the occasional tank or airplane.” The category menu backs that up: Aircraft, Boats, Go-Karts, Kei Vehicles, Military Vehicles, Tractors, Trains.
In 2025 the site ran 49,486 auctions, sold 81 percent of them, and cleared over $1.7 billion, per THE SHOP’s February 2026 report on Bring a Trailer’s year-end recap. The most-listed model years were 2006, 2004, 2008, 2005, and 2007, for the third year running. A 1954 pickup on Bring a Trailer gets seven days in a feed where the typical neighbor was built in 2006, and then the feed moves on.
BuyTheCar lists one thing. The seller FAQ limits the marketplace to “classic American cars produced in 1985 or earlier”: muscle cars, vintage trucks and SUVs, full-size cruisers, and restomods. It launched April 15, 2026, out of RestoMods, according to Yahoo Autos, and every listing is reviewed by a RestoMods mechanic before it goes live. Chris Esparza and the RestoMods team write a Wrench Report for each vehicle.
That’s a far smaller audience than Bring a Trailer’s, and I’d rather have it. A bidder who registered on BuyTheCar came for a pre-1985 American car. A bidder who registered on Bring a Trailer might have come for a Kei truck. When a ’49 Chevy pulls 29 bids in a room built for ’49 Chevys, the reserve tends to look reachable.
What the listing fee buys on each site
Bring a Trailer’s Classic service is $99 for a custom-written listing and a seven-day auction, with professional photography available as a $330 add-on, per How BaT Works. There are no other seller fees. The page describes the write-up, the comments section, and the daily email. It doesn’t mention paid promotion of individual listings.
BuyTheCar’s listing fee is also $99, and at the time of writing the site is waiving it for a limited time. There’s no commission on the sale, so a $29,000 hammer is $29,000 to the seller. The seller FAQ’s Marketing line reads: “We promote your car to our community of verified classic car enthusiasts, even buying Facebook ads to your listing!”
Those ads run for every listing, at no cost to the seller. BuyTheCar is a new marketplace spending money to build its audience, and it spends that money one listing at a time. Your truck gets its own ad budget.
| Bring a Trailer | BuyTheCar | |
|---|---|---|
| Seller listing fee | $99 (Classic); $330 photo add-on | $99, currently waived |
| Seller commission | None | None |
| Buyer’s fee | 5%, $250 minimum, $7,500 cap | 5%, $250 minimum, $5,000 cap |
| Auction length | 7 days | 7 days |
| What’s accepted | Anything interesting, any era, any country | American, 1985 or earlier |
| Per-listing paid promotion | Not stated | Facebook ads on every listing |
| Mechanic review of each listing | Not stated | Yes (Wrench Report) |
Sources: How BaT Works, BaT FAQ, BuyTheCar How It Works, BuyTheCar Seller FAQ.
What happens when the reserve isn’t met
About 19 percent of Bring a Trailer’s 2025 auctions, roughly 9,400 listings, ended without a sale. That’s the pool four of the five cars above came out of, and it’s where the two marketplaces differ most.
Bring a Trailer added a post-auction offer process in July 2024. The high bidder and the seller each get one offer and one counteroffer, with 24 hours per round, and the buyer’s fee applies if they agree, per the BaT FAQ. Howard Swig, Bring a Trailer’s head of auctions, told Car and Driver’s Brendan McAleer at the time: “Most of the feedback seems to be, ‘Why’d it take you this long?'” (Car and Driver via Yahoo, July 12, 2024). If that one round fails, the FAQ is candid about what’s next: “Generally speaking we don’t like to re-list a vehicle if it doesn’t sell. A listing tends to have the most interest when it is fresh to market.”
BuyTheCar’s seller FAQ says the team will “work with you and the highest bidder after the auction to see if a deal can still be reached,” and that “even if you strike a deal independently after the auction ends, Buy The Car does not take a cut.” If no deal comes together, you can re-list with an adjusted reserve or keep the car. There’s no no-sale fee either way.
That’s how the LeMans seller got $22,300 from a bidder whose last live bid was $16,500, and how the ’54 Chevy went from $19,750 on the clock to $28,000.
Where Bring a Trailer is still the right call
If the car is a 1990s Porsche, a Japanese import, a Ferrari, or anything built after 1985, list it on Bring a Trailer. BuyTheCar won’t take it. Bring a Trailer sold 48 cars above $1 million in 2025 (THE SHOP, above), and for a six-figure collector piece its audience and its decade of searchable results are the safer bet.
Bring a Trailer’s 81 percent sell-through is a published number, and BuyTheCar’s isn’t yet. The site is five months old. What it has instead are results like the five above.
How to sell your classic car for max value on BuyTheCar
- Check the cutoff. American, 1985 or earlier. Restomods qualify.
- Submit at buythecar.com/sell. The seller FAQ says to expect a first response within three to five business days and a scheduled auction in one to two weeks.
- Shoot 50 to 100 photos: exterior, interior, engine bay, underbody. Add a cold-start video and a driving clip. The FAQ asks for both.
- Set the reserve with your auction specialist using recent results. The FAQ notes no-reserve listings “typically see significantly higher engagement and more aggressive bidding,” and you can drop the reserve any time during the auction.
- Answer every comment during the seven days. Both sites tell bidders to read the whole comment thread before bidding.
- If the reserve holds, take the post-auction call. Two of the five sales above happened there.
Most transactions clear in three to seven business days after the buyer’s wire or cashier’s check, per the seller FAQ.
FAQ
Can I list a car on BuyTheCar after it didn't sell on Bring a Trailer?
Yes. All five vehicles in this article ran on Bring a Trailer first, and BuyTheCar’s seller FAQ has no restriction on cars that have been listed elsewhere.
Does BuyTheCar charge a seller commission?
No. The listing fee is $99, currently waived, and the seller keeps the full winning bid.
What vehicles does BuyTheCar accept?
Classic American cars and trucks built in 1985 or earlier, including restomods. Submissions are reviewed individually.
How long does a BuyTheCar auction run?
Seven days, with a two-minute reset on every late bid. Getting from submission to a scheduled auction takes about one to two weeks.
What if my car doesn't meet reserve on BuyTheCar?
The team works with you and the high bidder after the auction, and any deal you reach is commission-free. You can also re-list with a new reserve or keep the car. There’s no no-sale fee.
Is Bring a Trailer bigger than BuyTheCar?
Yes, by a wide margin: 1.6 million registered users and over 1,000 listings a week. The question for a pre-1985 American car is whether that audience is the right one.
What's the buyer's fee on each site?
Both charge 5 percent with a $250 minimum. Bring a Trailer caps it at $7,500 and BuyTheCar caps it at $5,000.
If you have a classic American car that didn’t meet reserve elsewhere, submit it here. Listing is free right now, and BuyTheCar pays for the ads on your listing.
