Thumbing through the pages of Auto Trader on a Sunday afternoon was one of my favorite things to do as a teen just shy of the legal driving age. I would dogear the pages, circle listings I wanted to show my father or friends and often tear pages out of the black-and-white weekly printing and pin them to my wall as some kind of ritualistic motivation to save money for that Rio Red colored Ford Mustang I dream of owning.
By the time I bought my first Mustang, though, Craigslist had become the preferred buy-sell-trade marketplace.
Now, firmly planted a quarter of the way into the next century, Facebook Marketplace is the drug of choice for grown men like me. But like the Craigslist era of automotive wheeling and dealing, Marketplace is rife with nonsense. So, for folks looking to sell something they're proud of, say this 1969 Shelby Mustang GT500 Fastback, they turn to Bring-a-Trailer, an auction site that, like the old Auto Traders of yesteryear, forces the seller to throw down a little something to showcase their wares, discouraging the fake and flakey types found on Facebook.
