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Comment by cmbaus | Hacker News Reader

Magnus's collection is beautiful and I love his aesthetic, but I can't help but think it is the ultra wealthy buyers who own a dozen 911s who are driving up the prices into the stratosphere. It might be sour grapes, but honestly, how many Porsche's does one guy need?

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There's not really enough ultra wealthy collectors to buy up the sheer amount of stock.

It's part fashion, it's part bubble, it's part QE. But the people driving up the prices are just regular guys buying the cars they've wanted for a while. Once supply dwindles, price goes up and creates a positive feedback loop.

It will all calm back down in a few years, where values will stay is anyones guess.

In my opinion I think it's generally the hipster crowd latching on to a new cool. It happens to every sub-culture. Obviously there is a limit to the supply of old things but I think you will find that once the new shiny cool of vintage old stuff dissipates the crowd move on and guys like Magnus are still there decades later doing their thing.

The custom motorcycle scene is a good example of this. So much new stuff flooded the market and everyone, including the new guys got bored. The shift to the old vintage and "garage" built stuff became the new hotness and now the old guard are having to pay stupidly high prices for half a cracked case and two burnt out pistons.

New comers with money buy up everything. Eventually though, either they don't have a clue what they are doing and/or give up soon after and just store the shit with the other failed quarter/mid life crisis dreams.

Like you though, it might be sour grapes.

The fact that you've attached "hipster" to anything involving internal combustion engines means that you're just using "hipster" to mean "the other", like how neocons use "communist" or neoliberals use "fascist" to refer to each other.

I do think there is a subculture of "hip" motorheads. Look at Zeitgeist (bar in SF) for instance. I think Magnus is someone who qualifies as being able to push fashion trends.

Internal combustion engines are never fashionable or trendy?

Like brc said, the guys who had Porsche wall posters in high school in the 70 and 80's finally got wealthy enough to afford their dream cars. I think something similar happened with the muscle cars. Once the prices started to climb, then other forces also came into play as well but it was the initial yearning for the dream cars of their youth that started it I think.

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