[Evan Smith]

A quality frame-off restoration could easily exceed $80-100,000, which seems to be the return on most of the high-end cars. I don't think it is overpaying at all. If you can afford it, who cares how much you spend? If most of us sold our racing operations we could take the money and go bid on a nice $30,000-70,000 car. And there are many nice muscle cars sold in that range.

The problem, or negative affect the TV auctions have, is that the guy with the average car compares his mildly restored, imperfect "driver" to a 100-point professionally done restoration. And from 50 feet two identical-looking cars could be anything but identical. Of course not every car that crosses the block at BJ, Mecum, or the others is a full resto, but the lesser cars go for less money and there are a ton of nicely sold cars at fair market prices.

There is no way a middle-class person making an average wage can come to grips, or have the rational, of a guy who is loaded and can afford to drop hundreds of thousands of dollars on a toy. It's no different than average father walking his son through the pits. These guys oohhh and aaahhh over our cars and trailers and can't even imagine having a race program like many of us have. They probably say, "how do these people afford this?"

If you are in the market for a muscle car, what's better than putting yourself in front of hundreds of potential cars to buy? Even if you overpay a little, it's still cheaper than flying all over the country looking at car after car. Plus they certainly enjoy the excitement of the event.

How many people think we are idiots for spending an entire weekend at a track to get what can amount to less than 5 minutes driving our cars?

No one forces anyone to bring a car there, or to buy a car there.