holly cow ...............again sorry for the typing

i did not intend to to stir up a fuss. anyway as i read Steve's letter i audibly gasped when he said he sold it for 13.5 k after all that work . i have my breath back and doing a little thinking i realize i will be facing the same fate .

when our kids pack us away to a nursing home they will sell our real Persian oriental rugs for 500 each and my garage full of tools for a grand . so what i guess the government will just xxxxxxx it away anyway .

we love this thing so far ,

we will see after out first adventure , should be heading south end of next week . going to west coast of Florida and will end up in middle of march at the FMCA rally in Georgia if anyone is there we plan to put out a sandwich board that says " NEWBIES ADVICE WELCOME "

again thank to everyone for the encouragement and advise , still need someone to teach my wife to clean fish ( or maybe the problem will be , i may need someone to teach me to catch them )

thank you folks

Didn't mean to scare you Jack. I could have probably held out for more but I was ready to move on and the buyer was someone I believed would apreciate the old coach. He continued the upgrades and is happy with it.

The old coach mantra says, "you buy it for 10K, put 10K into it, be lucky to sell it for 10K."

Point is, you do it for your own satisfaction, not as an investment. (Recall I did run that coach over 45,000 miles.) The used RV market has never been good for sellers. One of the biggest problems is that banks will not finance RVs over ten years old, and few people have a ton of cash to drop on a coach regardless of what it is really worth.

Do what you want to on your coach, and above all, enjoy it!

When you get to Fla, let us know. We are just east of Port Charlotte, easy distance to Tampa, Ft Meyers and points inland.

Over the years, Tere and I have bought and sold a lot of rvs. The life style as advertised in magazines and tv, is compelling and for some works well. Others give it up after just a few seasons. And then there's people like us that just like to work on them. Tere still does but at 83, I'm more of a spectator. We've owned five Barth's. Sold four of the five,probably broke even on three of them, and spent $30K more than we sold the other one for. I could second guess our decisions, knowing we could have a nice condo in Naples for what we've put in motor homes, but what's the point? Tere loves working on our 89 Regal and it's probably the best Barth we've ever had. Would I do it all over again, knowing what I know now? Hell no--just like a lot of other things that I wouldn't do again or even the first time for that matter. Wisdom is wasted on the old.
Jim

BTW, there were a couple of SOBs that we made money on, mostly because we bought them right, put sweat equity rather than real money in them, and sold them right.