I enjoy watching Wayne Carini going about his business too, and I
think I saw that Ferrari episode recently.
To me, the way to see and understand the "barn find" attraction is to
view it as an entirely different type of pleasure. It's more like finding a
pirate's treasure chest buried in your back yard - it's exciting because you
found a valuable thing that was just part of the dirt until some magic moment
of discovery. And the more potential the found object has, the more exciting
the discovery. So you leave the dirt on it for a while to tell the cool
story.
But in the long run -say it's a Deusenberg J that was dragged out of the
barn - a valuable collector car will be brought back to beautiful in one way
or another, and then the story will turn to being about the car instead of the
barn.
You can turn that car into anything you want if you own the title; and
some day when you go to sell it, the market will simply tell you whether
that's what they would have done to the car. In the broad spectrum of
collectors what bothers one person a lot might be admired by another.
Very little seems to get a free ride in universal agreement, but I think
most will be disappointed to find a car's very features don't match the
factory stamped trim tag. It makes me wonder: would that Ferrari have a trim
tag on it that would indicate its original color? Or would color have been
considered to be a highly original prerogative of the original buyer of the
car - and thus immaterial to subsequent owners as well? I really don't
know.
I still love the black on it, yet I think he should have left it white if
the plan is to cash out the highest at auction.
Keith Boonstra
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