I won't bore you with the details but I am doing a project on the rising cost of general aviation. I have all the info I need on fuel costs, maintenance cost, insurance etc. I also have comparatives regarding the prices of popular new planes, and popular used planes, Cessna 172, Cessna 152, Piper Cherokee, and so on.

What I can't find are any prices for wrecks, rebuildables, planes that have had prop-strikes, hail damage- nothing! One dead end after another.

I've tried looking online, calling insurance companies and I can't find it anywhere. I would like to have any price info I could get on what salvage planes are going for now. The people I do still know in general aviation don't know at all or only have info that is decades old. The decades old info was actually useful, but I still need at least current salvage aircraft price for a comparable.

Thank You to anyone who can help.


_{I may post this on "Others" too}

Posted by CaptOrbit I may post this on "Others" too

Good idea. No one goes on this board any more.

Anyway, it depends on if the damage is repairable or not. If not, then the price they get for them is probably going to be close to the price of scrap metal per ton.

Check Ebay motors, they have an aircraft section. There are always wrecked planes on there.

If you just google for insurance salvage auctions you should probably find out soon enough. Often the insurance companies themselves have links to their salvage sales right on their pages, though I think they're usually sealed-bid auctions -- try emailing ask asking what they sold for.

I think this is one of the bigger ones:
http://www.aigavia...e/SalvageList.aspx

There is even a brand-new Cessna Skycatcher on there already..

I mostly mess with Beech and have paid attention to some of the salvage auction sites and flown out to inspect some aircraft in the past.. I can give you one example. It's been a few years but one of the last ones I looked at was this '47 Bonanza:



It had avionics that weren't total crap (2 NAV/COMs @ $1800 each and $700+ each for the 2 CDI's & xponder), the crankcase was cracked but the tail and 1 wing were ok, IIRC.. I think it still got $12k at auction, we bid $10.5k. Any usable control surface or landing gear strut is worth $1-2k, it had a 1-piece windshield that was worth about $1-1.5k, an autofuel STC ($1.5k), a recent interior ($2kish), dual yoke ($1.5k), and it had an aftermarket later-model type instrument panel installed which is worth a couple grand on it's own..

Little things add up quick in these auctions though, as the bidders are usually just parts resellers, so you really need to know what the sum of the parts is worth when buying a salvaged aircraft. The airframe never really holds any value and scrap aluminum isn't worth the trouble. Repairable airframes don't often end up as salvage.

On this '47, for instance: the engine wasn't usable, but it had newer mags, a hydraulic constant-speed prop (very different setup than most aircraft -- the oil chamber is worth a bit), an air-oil separator, the carb, the spinner was untouched (the prop is worthless, obviously), and the cylinders could get a few hundred if they're low time.. so there was probably $5k more in parts sitting there as well.

I have more pics of it in here if you wanna look through (along with a bunch of other stuff -- the NJ and oldbridge pics are probably the most interesting as I don't have much recent stuff uploaded):

http://www.cybersl...m/albums/aviation/