A single bidder with the username Halfelven has snapped up dozens of similar Ford vehicles on Cars and Bids and Bring a Trailer
17 hours ago
- A single bidder has spent close to $5 million over the past few years on two very particular vehicle models on car auction websites.
- The bidder, whose handle is Halfelven, has won close to 50 Ford Broncos and F-150 Lightnings, plus other cars.
- Some Reddit users have suggested the seller bought the vehicles to send overseas, but his identity remains a mystery.
Scanning the offerings on the Bring a Trailer and Cars and Bids auction sites is a daily ritual for many of us. Some of you might even have placed a bid or two. But one bidder’s activity has gone far beyond that. Between 2021 and 2023, he won dozens of auctions on both websites, spending almost $5 million, most of it on Broncos and F-150 Lightnings.
The activity first came to light when Cars and Bids founder Doug DeMuro mentioned in one of his podcasts that one particular bidder was “buying all the Broncos,” something that inspired Reddit user taxz to do some digging.
Related: Ford Slows Bronco Production As Sales Slip Far Behind Jeep Wrangler
What he found is that someone using the name Halfelven on both sites had won 62 Ford auctions, that haul comprising of 37 Ford Broncos, 15 F-150 Lightnings and 10 other Ford vehicles, including a Mustang Mach-E, a Focus RS, and a Ranger. Total spend: $4.8 million.
A bit like being caught with a pound of coke, there’s no way you can claim that’s all for personal consumption. Scanning through the comments the bidder has left on some auctions he didn’t win, he mentions that he’s a third-generation car dealer, and a profile on Hagerty’s marketplace of someone with the same username lists the location as Henderson, Nevada.
We’ve reached out via Hagerty to who we think is the serial Bronco buyer to find out more about him and his business but have yet to hear back. Obviously car dealers are constantly buying vehicles for stock, so purchasing almost 40 Broncos over a three year period isn’t out of the ordinary. But we’d be interested to hear why he views auction sites like Bring a Trailer as a good place to buy cars from given that it has a reputation for realizing high sales prices that would cut into a dealer’s profit margins. Bronco prices did go crazy for a time a couple of years back, and they must have been crazy enough for the math to work.
One interesting detail Redditer taxz noted when compiling the table we’ve republished below is that the last two digits of Halfelven’s winning bids are always the same as the year of the car being auctioned, e.g. $57,022 for a 2022 Bronco. So if you ever find yourself engaged in a bidding war with him – which is probably on an old Porsche judging by his recent activity – remember to go one digit higher than the model year.
Some of the comments below the original Reddit post on /Cars suggest the buyer is selling them overseas, and so can still make a good profit even if he’s buying at high prices. Others claim (without proof) that it might be a money laundering operation. And a couple of people think he’s simply an employee at a Ford dealer and is selling them on as regular used cars. What do you think is going on?
WINNING AUCTIONS
H/t to Reddit/u taxz!
