Kelly Blue Book or Edmunds, who to believe?

might want to put the details of the car in your post

I would definitely say that the Edmunds price is much closer to the actual price then KBB.

Hmm, is your KBB the retail price? Is Edmunds the trade price? My favorite way to check car values is to just go to Autotrader and search for your car, subtract for high mileage, body damage, etc.

Quote from mwa423 : Hmm, is your KBB the retail price? Is Edmunds the trade price? My favorite way to check car values is to just go to Autotrader and search for your car, subtract for high mileage, body damage, etc.

Agreed, KBB and Edmunds can give you sense usually but craigslist, carsoup.com, or autotrader are the best places to find out the true value, although it takes more time and is up to interpretation.

Are you looking to sell a car, trade in a car, or buy a car??

Quote from mwa423 : Hmm, is your KBB the retail price? Is Edmunds the trade price? My favorite way to check car values is to just go to Autotrader and search for your car, subtract for high mileage, body damage, etc.

KBB is selling as a private party or something like that price. KBB trade in price was about $1K lower. Edmunds is the appraised price.

Quote from MNGuy183 : Are you looking to sell a car, trade in a car, or buy a car??

Neither. I'm trying to figure out if it's worth it to continue to have comprehensive on my car. If it's only worth $3-$4K, it's not. If it's $9-$10K, it is.

Mannheim

Sounds more like Edmunds is black book (auction) price. Try nadaguides as well..

Quote from 8mpg : Sounds more like Edmunds is black book (auction) price. Try nadaguides as well..

Looks to be the case. Nada is more in line with KBB.

OP, keep in mind that KBB, NADA, and Edmunds are only guides. It's no guarantee that you'll get that price. The car's true value is only really what someone else will pay for it. So you can try to find a good starting point from the guides, but don't blow the deal by being too much of a stickler to the guides' price.

Since this is for insurance coverage purposes, try to find out what your insurance company uses to price vehicles. I eventually got rid of collision on my car, but I kept the comprehensive so that I could have the gas coverage (it's been worth it for me).

Quote from travfar : Neither. I'm trying to figure out if it's worth it to continue to have comprehensive on my car. If it's only worth $3-$4K, it's not. If it's $9-$10K, it is.

Do you currently have Comprehensive and Collision coverage on the car? Most insurance companies will allow you to drop Collision and just keep Comprehensive. The premium for Collision is often up to three times the cost of Comprehensive, so removing Collision could represent a nice chunk of change off your insurance bill.

By keeping Comprehensive, you are still covering the car for things that are out of your control! Theft, weather damage, fire, vandalism, debris thrown from the road, falling objects and impact with a deer or other animal.

Using my own policy as an example, Comprehensive is $82.14 per year and Collision is $222.88 per year ($500 deductible on both). My 2006 Mazda3 is worth about $7k and I may decide to drop the Collision coverage in another year or two. But for $82/year, I'd rather know that I would get some compensation if my car was damaged or destroyed due to something that wasn't my fault....

Just something to think about. Most folks don't realize that you can keep Comp (the majority of insurance companies allow Comp only) but cancel Collision. They also don't realize that Collision is exponentially more expensive and Comp is pretty cheap.

Different dealers use different books. A long time ago I negotiated a car's trade in value and the dealer used the KBB as their basis for negotiation. The next time I went to buy a car, I studied the KBB beforehand so I knew more going into the negotiation, and that dealer pulled out the black book (average of auction prices for cars) and that figure was so low, it completely threw me off of how I planned the negotiation was going to go.

I would get a few figures from a few different sources and average them for your insurance purposes.

whatever the dealer has decided they are using that week, which sadly in my case has never been kbb