Quote:
Originally Posted by mav1178
only way you can know is to take your car to a place like Carmax, and have them give you an offer on the car as-is.
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Carmax is not going to offer what it would be worth in a private sale. They're in it to make money. They don't make any money if they buy at market value and then either sell at market value or have it sit on their lot for a long time waiting for a sucker to pay more than market.
About the best Carmax is going to give you is a lower limit for use in negotiating a trade in value with a dealer.
KBB and Edmunds are sometimes off, but they're usually about the best estimate you're going to get. They're not going off prices listed in CL ads. They're tracking actual sales prices as reported through a variety of sources, including used car dealers, auctions, lenders and sales tax records. When they're really wrong is in the case of very unique cars that don't generate a lot of sales data to calculate reliable averages. Our cars aren't Camrys, but there are enough of them sold to get reasonably good data.