The bid target: why one number beats a condition table

A bid target, built from the completed sales of cars most like the one in front of you, is more useful than a condition table because a single generation of collector car can sell across a range so wide that a condition grade cannot place a car inside it.

Condition tables are familiar. They list a model, then four or five grades from concours to project, with a price beside each. They look like an answer. This entry explains why we think one number with its evidence beats them.

How wide one generation really is

Start with the 1963-1967 Chevrolet Corvette, the C2. Across 2,487 completed US-dollar auction sales, as of 1 November 2026, the median was $88,000. The middle half of those sales fell between $64,000 and $140,400.

That is the typical range, not the extremes. A quarter of C2s sold below $64,000 and a quarter above $140,400. The upper edge of the middle half is a little more than twice the lower edge, for the same generation of the same car. After cleaning, the full range ran from $6,500 to $770,000.

Recent sales show the same spread inside one week. Between 21 and 27 October 2026, a 1966 convertible with the 327/300 sold for $70,000, a 1965 convertible converted to electric drive sold for $60,500, and a 1967 convertible with the L71 427/435 and a four-speed sold for $165,000. All three are C2 Corvette convertibles.

What a condition table does with that range

A condition table tries to explain the spread with one variable. It assumes the main difference between a $64,000 C2 and a $140,400 C2 is how nice each one is.

Condition matters a great deal, but it is not one thing. Originality, documentation and provenance sit alongside engine, body style and transmission, and a single grade has to fold all of them into one word. A big-block convertible with its original drivetrain and a small-block convertible in the same condition are not one grade apart. They are different markets.

A table with four grades has nowhere to put that. It averages across the very differences that set the price, and returns a number that describes no actual car.

Condition grades also depend on who is grading. A seller's "excellent" is often a buyer's "good". A table that prices adjectives inherits every disagreement about the adjective.

What a bid target does instead

A bid target starts from the specific car. A BidBetter report identifies its year, model, specification, mileage and title from the listing, then looks for completed sales of the cars most like it.

Those sales are adjusted for mileage, for specification and for how recently they sold. The report returns a bid target, a tight band around it, the wider realistic range, and the sales it was based on.

The last part matters most. You can read every comparable sale and decide whether you agree with it. If the report used a car you think is not comparable, you can see that and discount it. A condition table offers no such check, because it does not show what it was built from.

Why one number, with a band

One number is easier to act on than five. At an auction you need to know where to stop.

But one number alone would overstate what any estimate can know, so the target comes with a band and a range. The band shows how much uncertainty sits close around the target. The range shows the realistic spread of outcomes for comparable cars.

Neither is a promise about what a car will bring. Two very similar cars can sell a long way apart on the same day. A bid target is an estimate from comparable sales, not an appraisal and not a guarantee. Its job is to stop a bidder from paying a number no comparable car has supported, and to show a seller what the market has actually paid.

Where the median fits

The model pages publish the median and the middle half for each generation. Those are the market. They are the right first step: they tell you whether your car's asking price is ordinary, high or low for what it is.

The bid target is the second step. It takes your car from the generation-wide band, $64,000 to $140,400 for a C2, to the narrower band where cars like it have actually sold.

Method

The C2 figures come from BidBetter's cleaned set for 1963-1967 Corvettes: 2,487 completed auction sales from January 2016 to 30 October 2026, as of 1 November 2026, in US dollars. Asking prices, reserve-not-met results, withdrawn lots and non-vehicle lots are excluded, duplicates removed, and implausible outliers set aside. The three recent sales are listed with their sources on the C2 Corvette page, which also sets out its method and sources.

The same approach is used for every model at /value/models. The 911 method section shows the rules in full, including what was set aside and why.