Last month I was looking through a box of car magazines at the swap meet and I found a few rare vintage racing program books at the bottom.
At the time, I did not know their value and I figured each program book was worth maybe 15 to 20 dollars.
To my surprise, one of the program racing books was titled “1950 First Annual Pebble Beach Racing Program Book” which was worth 10 times what I initially thought.
Before I listed it for sale, I could not find a listing or sold comp on eBay. The only way I found the price was with the online pricing guide called WorthPoint (which you have to pay a monthly fee for.)
When I saw a few sold listings on WorthPoint in the range of $200 – $500 dollars, I knew I had something special.
This book is very rare, in the last 5 years, there were only three sold listings for this program book.
So with that information, I posted the Pebble Beach Racing Program Book for sale on eBay with a price of $350 (with accepting a best offer.)
The next day, to my surprise, I got a best offer of $250.00 dollars.
I thought it over, messaged back and forth with the buyer a bit, and ended up selling the program book for the $250 they offered. As you’ll see in the pictures below, it was not in pristine condition and had some moisture problems on its paper cover and inside pages.
Lesson Learned From Selling This Item
If you are out sourcing car magazines to flip on eBay, keep an eye out for any racing event program books. If you have a vintage one like I did and can’t find it on eBay, make sure you check out WorthPoint before concluding it’s not worth anything.
Here are some pictures of the 1950 Pebble Beach Program Book that I listed on eBay and sold.
Final Thoughts
It goes to show that places like the swap meet and flea market keep paying off each and every time I go.
The chances of you finding an old Auto Racing Program Book are close to none anywhere else.
For example, most companies that host estate sales would have thrown this into the trash, and a thrift store reselling books would have for sure just looked at this old paper program book and tossed it in the trash too.
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