Kellys Blue Book – What is it and Why Use It?

Kellys Blue Book – What is it and Why Use It?

Are you in the market to buy a car, or sell or trade in your old one? Cars are more than just day-to-day essentials to take you places when ever and where ever you want – they can also serve as long term investments when you decide to re-sell them. If you want to get the best value for your money, a good reference and one of the recognized authorities in car pricing is Kellys Blue Book.

Kellys Blue Book is a must-have for anyone contemplating buying, selling or trading in a car. As a portable guide, KBB offers an unbiased and trustworthy blue book value of cars, and has automotive value appraisal guides for all types of motor vehicles in the United States – Kellys Blue Book for cars, KBB motorcycle, RV Blue Book for campers and motor homes, as well as Kellys Blue Book for boats, and even ATV Blue Book and Mobile Homes Blue Book values – both used and new, even one for classic cars , for vehicles dating as far back as the 1940s. Since its first publication in 1926 as a list of used cars that the author wanted to buy and how much he was willing to pay for them, Kellys has since evolved to a glorified status similar to an automotive industry bible, a nationwide standard car price information guide  for both dealers and buyers.

Aimed to meet the requirements of its users, KBB now has several printed versions. The most widely used ones include the KBB Auto Market Report – Official Guide for blue book for cars used by auto dealers, financial institutions and others in the trade, and since 1993 available in almost every American book store for buyers is their New Car and Used Car Guide: Consumer Edition. The Kellys Auto Market Report version is intended to help people in the trade industry competitively price their vehicles for sale while the consumer Kellys Blue Book for cars version aims to help you buy a new or used car from a dealer or from a private party, trade in your automobile to a dealer, or sell your used car to a private party.

Moreover, KBB pricing reports for new and used cars have been available on the internet since 1995. What’s more, the Kellys Auction, Kellys Trade-in, Wholesale Lending, and Retail (covering 1989-2008 model years) values are now updated weekly and distributed online.

If you’re curious as to what you can expect from Kellys New Car Guide, here’s what it contains – the Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price (MRSP), dealer’s invoice prices (price the manufacturer charges the dealer for the car), any extra costs that may be involved, such as shipping, optional-equipment price (optional sunroof, DVD, etc.), and new car value on vehicles for the current model year. The new car values are collected from thousands of transactions from dealers across the United States and the blue book for cars reflects the actual average selling price that people pay when they buy their cars from new car dealers.

If you’re interested in used cars, Kellys Used Car Guide is considered the consumers’ leading choice. It gives invaluable information on the blue book for cars made in the last 15 years – an important requirement for any car values price guide since over 60 percent of the vehicles on the road are 12 years old or older according to the National Automobile Dealers Association.

What you will find inside are  private-party car prices value (up-to date price you could expect to get for a car if you personally sold it to a buyer),  trade-in values, and  suggested retail values (including the dealer’s cost for any repairs and general dealer overhead such as paying salespeople, paying for advertising and keeping cars in inventory) on over 10,000 models of used automobiles.

For Kellys Blue Book car prices on used cars and trucks, many of which are sold between private individuals, it would be almost impossible to get the actual selling prices, so KBB appraises a used car’s value by collecting information about the car’s price when new then computing its depreciation value based on previous model years, the quality of the car and the number of cars on the used car market. You can actually calculate your car’s expected price by utilizing Kellys charts and tables that help determine your car’s over-all value, based on the condition of the car (from excellent to poor), the vehicle’s mileage, optional components like built-in equipment, and the geographic area where the car has been.

Remaining the standard blue book value of cars, the makers of Kellys Blue Book continue to apply their 75 years of car appraisal experience to provide an invaluable service to car dealers and buyers alike. The Kellys Blue Book stands as a great starting point to get the best value for your car.