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Originally Posted by Seth Swoboda
I agree that the swap meets are dwindling away. However, the economy is in pretty rough shape also. I work at a bank and there are not many people spending money on much of anything.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Fullraceflathead
The economy is very bad very few people have money to spend you're very fortunate if you have money to spend this year.
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If you work at a bank and you're not seeing people taking out loans like they used to, that's downstream of higher interest rates – which were instituted to put the brakes on an economy that was running too hot. Loans and other credit activity boost the money supply, and in a hot economy that causes inflation. So the lack of loan activity is intentional and good, from an economic stability perspective.
I think the Model A hobby could well be experiencing an economic slump even while the broader economy is doing fine, because the hobby consists mostly of retirees, whose income streams are typically less responsive to inflation than the wages of those still in the labor force. So even though real wages are trending up (particularly for young, low-income workers), the buying power of the specific people in this hobby is going down.
There's also likely something of a hangover effect from all the stimulus money that was spent in the hobby in 2020-22. If you were paying attention then, you remember a rapid run-up in market prices for cars. Now that bubble has popped and demand is returning to normal, or even below normal (because the cars are a durable good).