Last week I reported a King Kat for sale on eBay= that made it to a high bid of $9,800. The reserve was not met, so the sale didn’t go through.
Last night I met someone via an ad I’d placed on the web for parts. He had a track for me from a 1976 Arctic Cat Z. He lives not to far from my office, so I agreed to drive out to his place after work and take a look. When I arrived at his house, he was attempting to start his motorcycle with no luck. We walked down to the barn to take a look at the track. The track was good.
We settled on a price, then started looking at some of his vintage cats. A 76 Z, an El Tigre and some others I didn’t recognize. He asked me if I was interested in buying a King Kat. “I’d love to, but I’ve never even seen one, let alone one for sale”. I said, not even imagining he actually had one.
“I keep the good stuff in my garage” he said with a grin. I knew I was in for a good surprise. I told him about Vintage sleds.com. He’d never seen the site. But he had put his King Kat on eBay a few days ago. That’s when I knew I had stumbled on to a good story. I couldn’t help think what a small world it is.
In his garage was not only the eBay King Kat, but another one in good condition, just two serial numbers away from the now famous eBay King Kat. He bought three King Kats a while back, but didn’t really want all of them. He was forced to buy them as a package to get the one he wanted. The package also included a 1973 Formula II that he is restoring.
I’m not a Cat guy, but the King sure looked good to me. Four green temperature gauges. Racing seat. A chassis that measures correctly. But with those four giant-ass cylinders sticking out of the hood, who cares if it’s totally original? These things look positively cool!
We chatted about the Kings for some time. It turns out he did, as Doc Jim correctly guessed, have the reserve price so high it was unlikely anyone could meet it. But he got emails. Man, did he get emails.
One lucky gentleman on the East coast had until last night to make up his mind if he wants to purchase both of them. If not, there are many more people lined up to pick one or both of them up. How much will they go for? I promised not to tell, but let’s just say if you bought both the sleds, you could have taken the same amount of money and bought a handful of brand new, top of the line Arctic Cats. And a covered trailer if, you found a good sale.
But I don’t know of any new Arctic Cats, let alone trailers, that have four cylinders sticking out of the hood, so why spend your money foolishly? This stories not over. I’ll keep you posted as I find out the rest.
