By Ollie Juggins
20th January 2026
Part of our “How do I sell my Classic Car?” Series.
‘Industry insiders’ often end up using a lot of jargon. Auctioneers are no different. Sometimes people don’t understand a bit of jargon, but sometimes they misunderstand it, which is worse because then nobody asks what it means!
In this blog, we want to answer the questions: “what is a reserve?”, “what are the problems with setting a reserve too high?”, and “how should I set my reserve?”
We’ll also provide real-life examples of reserves and how they’ve impacted bidding.
We know that selling a car can be a very personal thing. You want its value to reflect the love, care, and money you’ve put into it. As classic car owners ourselves, we understand that. You really don’t want to sell it far below market value.
This is where the reserve comes in.
A reserve is simply a safety net to ensure you don’t give your car away. It’s a single number: the lowest bid you would accept for your car. If nobody bids higher than the reserve, your car doesn’t sell.
This protects you primarily from external events – e.g. a big news day, blackouts, or internet outages – that would stop people bidding. It stops your car selling for a number you’d be really uncomfortable with.
It’s not the car’s value.
It’s not the price you hope to achieve.
Think about a classified sale: if you put the car up for £50,000 but you know you’d take £46,000 – then set the reserve somewhere below £46,000. Try to put yourself in Future You’s shoes. Would you be more disappointed if the car sells for a bit below £46,000, or if it doesn’t sell at all?
There’s a key point to remember: setting a higher reserve will not result in a higher sale price, because it’s never divulged to bidders.
In fact, a high reserve can actually suppress bidding. If a car is approaching market value and bidders can see it’s still not past its reserve, they might put in a low bid knowing they can negotiate with an increasingly desperate seller after the auction ends with the car unsold.
If, however, the reserve has been met, they know they have to be the high bidder in order to win the car.
This means they must keep watching the auction, and keep bidding if they want to win. That’s when auction magic happens: the excitement and bidding momentum builds as multiple people try to win.
This is why lowering or removing a reserve can actually increase the price you get for your car. Weird, but true!
Let’s look at some real life examples from our auctions:
The seller of this Audi Quattro (for restoration) was nervous about the bidding, and didn’t want the car to sell too cheaply. However, he decided to remove the £14k reserve on the last day, and the bidding rocketed: the car sold in auction for £41,340!
The seller of this classic Range Rover had set a reserve of £8k because he was nervous about “giving the car away”. However, as with the Audi, he removed it on the last day and bidding shot up to £17,995.
We see this pattern week in, week out. A sensible reserve gives your car the chance to perform at its best in the real market. A high reserve chokes off demand and kills the sale.
A Trade Classics Auctions expert will start by studying your car in detail – we’ve been doing this for years. We’ll have taken hundreds of photos & videos of your car and its history. We’ll have spoken with you about it in detail. So we’re in the best position to understand how the market will react to it.
We then look at the market itself: we investigate all recent, relevant auction results to create a picture of what people are paying for cars like yours. When we’re confident, we make our recommendation to you.
I mentioned classifieds earlier to illustrate an example, but we need to address a common myth here: that classifieds prices are a reliable guide to the value of your car. Simply put, this is wildly inaccurate. Sellers almost always ask for high prices in classifieds, but that doesn’t make their car, or yours, worth that. Many classifieds stay up for over a year, and many more are taken down unsold because the asking prices are too high for the market.
The ONLY way to tell what a car is worth when you want to sell it is with a trusted auction.
Work with us on the reserve and we’ll help you get the strongest real value for your car.
As we always say: if you present a car at its best, show it to the right buyers, and make bidding safe & easy, you’ll get true market value for it.
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