Classic Cars Arena vs Hemmings for Selling Your Classic

A friend from the club spent most of last winter deciding where to sell his 1965 Buick Riviera. Every Tuesday night he had a new plan. One week it was Hemmings, because that is where his father bought and sold cars. The next week it was a cheaper listing somewhere newer, because his nephew told him nobody under fifty reads a magazine. The argument went around the table until one of the older members asked him a simple question: "Where's the build sheet?" He had it, in a folder, in the trunk. That settled more than the platform debate ever did, and I will come back to why.

This is the Hemmings vs Classic Cars Arena question, laid out side by side. It is written by Classic Cars Arena, so I have made a point of saying where Hemmings is simply the stronger choice. There are several places where it is. If you want the full field of listing sites before you narrow it to two, there is more on this in the main guide.

Two different kinds of marketplace

Hemmings has been part of the hobby since 1954, when Ernest Hemmings started publishing classified ads for collectors out of Quincy, Illinois. Over seventy years it grew from a classified sheet into a full marketplace with a print magazine, an online auction platform, and several ways to list a car. A seller there can run a plain classified ad, a Make Offer listing, or an online auction. Each is sold to the seller as a flat fee per listing: on Hemmings' current package page, a classified ad is $179.95, a Make Offer listing is $99.95 (free with a Hemmings Motor Club membership), and an auction is $99.95, charged once the submission is approved. In the auction and Make Offer formats, the buyer pays a 5% success fee on top of the sale.

Classic Cars Arena is a newer, classic-only classified site with one format and three tiers: Starter at $49, Featured at $99, and Premium at $179. No commission, no success fee, no buyer premium, and the ad stays up until the car sells. The buyer pays the seller directly. So the comparison is not like for like. Hemmings offers a choice of selling formats under one long-trusted name. Classic Cars Arena offers one format at a low flat price with email exposure built into the upper tiers.

Hemmings and Classic Cars Arena side by side

Where Hemmings has the edge

Heritage counts for something real here, and I would be telling you a tall tale if I said otherwise. Seventy-odd years of being the place collectors look means a buyer who has never heard of your car's previous owner has heard of Hemmings. That trust lowers the temperature of the first phone call. The readership leans experienced. They know what a correct restoration looks like, they know where reproduction parts give themselves away, and they ask about paperwork early. You get fewer uninformed offers and sharper questions, which is the better trade for a well-documented car.

The print magazine is a second edge that no online-only site can match. A classified ad appears online and runs for a month in Hemmings Motor News. There are still buyers in this hobby who read the paper copy cover to cover, often with a pen in hand, and some of them have the most money and the most patience of anyone looking.

Then there is the auction option. If you want a deadline, a classified of any kind cannot give you one. Hemmings Auctions charges the seller $99.95 and adds a 5% fee for the buyer, with a floor and a cap. On a $40,000 car that buyer fee works out to $2,000 before any cap applies. Most bidders keep that fee in mind when they bid, so it is not free money to you, but the format forces a decision on a set date, and for some sellers that certainty is worth it. Classic Cars Arena has nothing comparable. It is a classified site, full stop.

Where Classic Cars Arena has the edge

Simplicity of the money, first. One fee, paid once, $49 to $179, and nobody takes a percentage from either side of the deal. The buyer pays you directly. On a classified ad, Hemmings also leaves the sale price alone, so the difference there is just the listing fee: $179.95 there against $49 to $179 here. Against the auction and Make Offer formats, the difference is the buyer's percentage, and buyers do notice it when they set their limits.

The listing also stays up until the car is sold. That matters more than it sounds for a car with a small buyer pool. A Riviera like my friend's, or a Studebaker, or a big Chrysler letter car, might wait months for the one person who wants exactly that car. Hemmings classified and Make Offer listings run up to six months online, which is a fair stretch, but if the car is still there after that you are paying again.

The email exposure is the other piece. A Featured listing is the lead story of one newsletter blast, and Premium gets three blasts, one of them a VIP email where your car is the only car in the message, delivered to 15,000+ people who signed up specifically to receive new listings. That list is smaller than the audience Hemmings has built over decades, and I won't pretend otherwise; Hemmings also puts its $99.95 Make Offer and auction listings into its own daily emails. But on the VIP send, your car is not sharing the page, and on the others it leads it. For broad name recognition among everyday car shoppers, Autotrader's classics site is a different proposition again; read more on that if your car is a later model with crossover appeal.

"Every platform argument at the club ends the same way. Somebody asks for the paperwork. A car with its build sheet, its receipts and its ownership chain sells on whichever site you choose. A car without them gets talked about, and then it gets talked down."

— Wayne Coburn

Who should pick which

Here is the punchline to my friend's winter of Tuesday nights. Once he laid the build sheet, the window sticker copy and thirty years of receipts on the table, nobody cared much which site he used. The paperwork was going to sell the car. The platform only decided who saw it first and what it cost him to be seen.

Pick Hemmings if you have an American classic or a pre-war car whose best buyer is an experienced collector, if you value the trust that comes with a name buyers have known for decades, if you want print exposure, or if you want an auction deadline instead of an open-ended classified. For a high-value car with strong documentation, that combination is hard to beat.

Pick Classic Cars Arena if you want a low flat fee with nothing taken from either side, a listing that stays up until the car is sold, or a newsletter blast where your car is the lead story, or the only car in the message on Premium's VIP email. It also suits sellers who would rather not run an auction at all and want to talk to buyers on their own schedule.

Nothing stops you from running a Hemmings classified alongside a Classic Cars Arena listing, either, as long as the asking price matches in both places. Put the paperwork in the photos, write the history in plain words, and when you have the folder in order, list the car today.

Sources and notes

• Hemmings: Sell your classic car with a Hemmings listing (package prices, buyer fees, durations, print and email promotion)
• Hemmings: Frequently asked questions
• Hemmings: Seller guides
• Hemmings: About Hemmings
• ClassicCars.com: Sell your classic car (for comparison with another long-running listing site)

Hemmings terms were checked on its own package page in October 2026 and can change; confirm them on the day you list. The Hemmings Auctions buyer-fee floor and cap are set out on its auction pages. Classic Cars Arena figures are from our own price list.