So the hammer fell at $46K. Definitely a high for a stock TCS. But clearly this is one very good looking car: complete, ready to show and enjoy the drive. More than that, it came with massive and detailed documentation covering a very extensive frame-off restoration history, done by a well-known and generally respected person who did most of the work, and then published a book all about this one car's evolution, featuring it on the cover.
All that certainly added a lot to the desirability and legacy, and likely ongoing value. I still think it is a lot to pay for a Europa, but at least there was good reason to go well above the market price, and more so compared to far too many hack/shade tree/incomplete flawed restoration jobs with questionable history, work, materials, and mostly a pile of inflated claims about rarity and/or condition that too often show up on eBay. It also would have been even better if that restoration were fresh, and not showing quite so much of its subsequent road use. But its still well above what many Europas can claim for condition.
In the end, I can't really argue much with this final price. You should get what you pay for, and it should be fairly represented, rather than some seller hawking hyperbole about an imaginary market, hoping to con buyers into paying entirely too much for average or worse cars.
