On February 24th, 2002, my wife and I were driving to Livermore to see her parents and I let it slip that I bid on a Ferrari on E-Bay, Item #1807086518. I have always wanted to own a V-12, and I have been looking at all the models during various events (Concorso Italiano, as well as the Hillsborough Concours), doing the research, and bugging people in the know. I settled on the 250 GTE after realizing that Lussos were out of my league, and after talking to Len Miller, a most gracious host to the 250 GTE registry for over 25 years, as well as my neighbor in San Carlos, CA. I only wish I had been able to buy his car...
Officially, I had been planning to acquire a GTE at the end of 2004, when my wife would be finished with her MBA. Upon hearing my confession, my wife had inquired about the abount I bid. I told her that it was low, so low that I could resell it at a profit in one week, even if the car was in Belgium and I had to get it here.... To my surprise, she asked how much the car was worth and then asked for me to hand over the Kyocera, a wireless Palm Pilot/Phone device that included the EBay mobile applications. She bid that exact amount***. A message came back on the screen stating that there has been an error and the data was not transmitted. I of course asked Laurie to repeat the exercise, but she said "no go", an impulse was an impulse, it cannot be replicated. When we arrived (with my 1 year old in tow) to see the in-laws, I went upstairs to check where the bidding was on the car. To my surprise, my bid did go through, and I was the high bidder ! Sadly, I was eventually outbid by two different folks. But...they both flaked !!!!! I e-mailed the seller, asking if he was going to relist the car, or whether he was interested in offers after I had a chance to inspect the car. He said yes to the latter. Arie Mandemakers at AME engineering did an excellent job and sent me all the data in a fax. At first I passed on the car because he did such a good job of finding problems, but after realizing that the engine and the body were basically sound, I made an offer a few $K bellow my high bid from before. The seller, with whom I now developed a relationship (lots of annoying e-mails from me) agreed, perhaps knowing that the car would not be chopped up or rebodied as a fake GTO for the gold chain set.
