Pull up the same car in three classic car value guides and you will usually get three different answers. Not wildly different on a common model, but different enough that a seller can pick the highest one and believe it. That is the wrong way to use them. Each guide is built from different data, published on a different schedule, and aimed at a different customer, and the spread between them is information in its own right.
I have spent a long time comparing guide figures against hammer prices, and the pattern is consistent. The guides are good at telling you the neighborhood. They are poor at telling you the address. This piece compares the three most-used sources, Hagerty, J.D. Power, and Hemmings, on what each actually measures, and shows how to read them together. For the full pricing process, from comps to condition grading to setting an asking price, see our guide on how much is my classic car worth.
Why the mainstream guides go blank
Most sellers start with the tool they used for their daily driver, and it fails them. Kelley Blue Book does not publish values for collector cars or for vehicles older than roughly 21 model years. Anyone who has tried to Kelley Blue Book classic car value has seen the result: the model simply is not in the menu. The reason is structural. Mass-market guides model depreciation for transportation, using dealer transaction data on cars that lose value every year. A 1969 coupe does not follow that curve, and the data needed to price it comes from auctions, private sales, and specialist dealers instead.
That is the gap the collector guides fill. They fill it in different ways.
Hagerty, J.D. Power and Hemmings side by side
| Hagerty Valuation Tools | J.D. Power classic values | Hemmings | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it is | Condition-tiered price guide | Retail price guide, formerly NADA Guides | Marketplace and publication, founded 1954 |
| Coverage | 40,000+ collector vehicle entries | Classic, collectible, exotic and muscle cars | Whatever is currently listed or recently auctioned |
| Data sources | Auction results, private sales, insurance data, dealers | Proprietary market data, sold to dealers, lenders and insurers | Seller asking prices; results from its own online auctions |
| How values are shown | By condition, #1 concours to #4 driver | Low, average and high retail | Individual listings and individual results |
| Update rhythm | Quarterly, by Hagerty's own analysts | Three times a year | Continuous, as cars list and sell |
| Who relies on it | Owners, insurers, appraisers | Banks, credit unions, insurers | Buyers and sellers researching specific cars |
| Main weakness | An average across cars that share a description | Broad bands; condition definitions need careful reading | Asking prices are not sale prices |
Hagerty is the closest thing the hobby has to a reference index. Its strength is the tier structure: you can see what the market pays for a #2 versus a #3 example of the same car, and that spread is usually the most useful number in the whole exercise. Its weakness is the one every index shares. The figure describes a typical car in that condition, and the cars with unusual options, documentation, or color are exactly the ones a typical figure misprices.
J.D. Power matters for a different reason. When a buyer finances a classic through a bank or credit union, the lender may well check J.D. Power figures, since J.D. Power sells its values to banks and credit unions, and a price far above its high retail number can make a loan harder to approve. Its low, average and high bands are broader than Hagerty's tiers, so the condition description you choose matters more than the column you read.
Hemmings is not a value guide in the formal sense, and it does not pretend to be. It is a live view of supply. Its classifieds show what sellers want right now, and its online auction results show what buyers actually paid in that format. Used correctly, it tells you how many competing cars a buyer will see next to yours, which the other two guides cannot.
Reading the three together
The method I use is triangulation, and it takes about an hour per car. Start with Hagerty and grade the car honestly, then note the figure for that tier and the one below it. Most owners overgrade by one tier, and the vast majority of collector cars are #3 cars, so the lower figure is your risk case. Next, read J.D. Power, select the condition description that matches, and note where its average retail sits against Hagerty's number. Then go to Hemmings and count how many comparable cars are listed, at what asking prices, and whether any recent auction results exist for the model.
Here is how that reads on an illustrative example, not a real car. Say Hagerty shows a #3 figure of $32,000 and a #2 of $45,000 for your model. J.D. Power's average retail sits near $34,000. Hemmings has six comparable cars listed between $38,000 and $52,000, and two recent auction results at $31,500 and $36,000. The guides agree on the low-to-mid thirties for a driver. The listings are hopeful by $5,000 to $15,000, which is normal. The auction results confirm the guides. A realistic target for a solid #3 car is the mid-thirties, and the asking prices above $45,000 belong to cars that will either prove they are #2 examples or sit.
The disagreements are where the analysis gets useful. If Hagerty and J.D. Power sit far apart, one of them is lagging a recent move, and the auction results will usually tell you which. If every listing sits well above every guide figure and nothing is selling, the market is softer than the asking prices suggest. If recent hammer prices beat the guides, the guides have not caught up yet, and you may have room to ask more.
"A value guide is a moving average. Sellers who treat it as a quote end up either leaving money behind in a rising market or sitting on the car in a falling one."
— David Mercer
Where all three fall short
Every guide struggles in the same places. Rare options and low-production variants often have too few transactions to price reliably, so the guide either folds them into the base model or publishes a figure based on very few sales. Documented provenance, a matching-numbers drivetrain, a known ownership chain, or a period race history can move a car well above its tier, and no guide sees any of that. Modified cars and restomods sit outside the guide structure almost entirely. And none of them can see the car itself.
That is where a written appraisal takes over. If your car falls into one of those categories, or if a buyer is likely to challenge your number, the cost and the different appraisal types are worth understanding, so see this next. For everything else, the guides do their job well enough, provided you use all three, read the spread rather than the highest figure, and check the result against what cars like yours have actually sold for.
Sources and notes
- J.D. Power Classic, Collectible, Exotic and Muscle Car Appraisal Guide (low, average and high retail; updated January, May and September)
- J.D. Power Values, business solutions (values sold to banks, credit unions, lenders and insurers)
- Hagerty newsroom, Valuation Tools refresh (January 2022) (prices updated quarterly, previously three times a year)
- Hagerty Valuation Tools (collector vehicle values by condition)
- The Appraisal Foundation, frequently asked questions (standards behind written appraisals)
The worked example above uses illustrative figures, not values for a real car.
