Rafael, you won't like the answer. Right now the answer is whatever the last guy paid for it. You'd have to get an average price on similar vehicles sold to get a true value.
If you're asking for the true market value on that one specific low mileage bus, it's as much as the market will bear, and somebody just set the bar pretty high. They're worth whatever you can get someone else to pay for them on the open market. Those low mileage buses attracted a lot of attention, and as you said there is a certain amount of competition at times that it doesn't make sense to compete with. My auction motto was "You can't compete with stupid." I don't want to prove I have a bigger wallet than that other guy. I just want a good deal. I spent most of my time looking at heavy equipment and not buses. There isn't the same profit margin on buses and they're hard to sell to specific buyers.
I've found a few low mileage dognose shorties, but I think Rhonda was looking for a little gasser shorty.
I've seen guys bid way over new cost on used HF tools at auctions. It doesn't make sense, but somebody won. At the same time I've been at auctions where the auctioneer wouldn't take my bid, selling to one specific buyer.
Auctions are undependable. People have learned to work them to their advantage. I can't imagine why that bus sold for that much, and it effectively raises the value of all shorties a little bit all across the board. Personally I can't imagine being able to resell that bus for that price. It was worth it to someone. Perhaps it was an individual end user that wanted a really good bus. It's hard to say.
The bus community is attracting more and more people. Successful people. Maybe in that respect having buses puts us ahead of the curve?
Sorry about the value of that specific bus. I'd call that a definite spike in the price, and considering it was a nearly new condition bus it obviously had a lot of people watching it.
I'd also like to have a bus like that, but that's completely out of my price range. It's kind of a small bus anyway. I'm thinking that's eBay prices bleeding into the auction seen because the market is absorbing buses. Competition, but I wonder why all of a sudden. I don't think it's just the tiny home movement.
