Thinking 35 years into the future, buying up spare parts in the '80s after you bought the 442 in 1985 might make you a highlander... Are you immortal? With the time value of money, you could have bought an once of gold for $280 in 2000 and had the same ROI as the door emblem. You have a business where you sell NOS parts, often discontinued parts... That is what you do. Is it the best business model? No. Is it the best investment scheme? No. I can see how turning a really fat profit on discontinued plastic clips and rubber seals invites ridicule (not from me)... Does it matter what other people think? Only if you think so.
If I cared what people thought of me, I'd never leave the house. I do consider myself blessed and lucky. I was blessed enough to have good paying jobs throughout my working career that allowed me to spend more money on car parts than typical druggies do on their fixes. And lucky enough to be able to put my name on 1 of 3,000 unit builds from Oldsmobile. I didn't know about specialty car allocations based on previous year's sales back in those days, but James Oldsmobile in Charleston (technically North Charleston) had at least ONE allocation for 1985 model year for a 442. And with 3,300 Olds dealerships across the U.S. during that time frame, some dealers got none. I ordered it my way, and I'm glad I did.
The biggest difference of your investment comparison is that you can't really compare what I did to investing in gold. For one, you can't put a piece of gold on your car as a restoration piece. Additionally, I'm not a business. Never have been. All the junk I have is my personal stash. I chose to buy parts instead of gold. And adjusted for inflation, that gold would only have netted me 143% in 39 years. About 600% without inflation adjustment.
If you want to talk about ROI on investment, I could have made a BETTER investment than buying gold had I bought $500 of Walmart stock in February 1985 and forgot about it (it split 9 times since then). If you NEVER touched it, you'd probably have over $1 million today (about a 2,000% return). So I spent 16K on a 442 instead of Walmart stock- so does that mean I'd have $30 million today had I chose the stock over my 442? Was the price of this car, or any car, a good investment? Monetarily speaking- No. They never are. But that isn't why I did what I did. Besides, the wife and I have invested in our 401k's and other investment vehicles over the years, and we're more than comfortable dollar-wise. Returns have been sucking a bit the last couple of years though, though I don't need to tell you why. You can probably come up with a lot of examples of better investments than gold or even Walmart stock, but gold should have a place in a portfolio.
You would be correct in that the 442 door emblems are indeed, gold in color, and in 1985 their cost seemed like they actually were made of gold. They're worthless to someone with a Monte, or Regal. You can choose to invest your $$ where you wish. Some people buy gigantic houses because they can. Is it smart monetarily? Not always. Some choose to go on world cruises. Because they can. And others pay for their kids' education. Why? Because they can. Not because it turns out to be a great investment. But it's what they choose to invest in.
And my "investing" has been dollar-cost-averaged in that I didn't buy all the parts all at once. They've dribbled in over a long length of time. Since I was on a sea-going submarine at the time, it wasn't until 1988 I got to shore duty and was able to really start picking up this and that at the dealership. It helped being a "regular customer" and getting discounted prices, and was even able to simply call in a set of part numbers to order (internet wasn't a thing back then).
As parts started drying up from dealers, then third party places like ebay and swap meets and stuff like that were places to stumble over parts. Some prices reasonable, some not so much. Then in the 2010s, the "donk era" bled over to the G-bodies and people were spending stupid money on NOS GM parts for these cars and really cleaned off the shelves. I admit I did thin some of the parts herd during this time and true, those $8 dollar parts tossing them in on an auction and netting $40 and $50 or more in profits was rather nice.
Looking back, if I were to advise my younger self to do this, I'd say DON'T DO WHAT I DID. It turns out it would have been cheaper to wait and find a low-mile example that would need minor parts replacement to make it workable again even if you had to spend more than double what it sold for new. It's certainly not a good business model if your intentions are to make money off the deal. But my goals were never to make money. I just knew I didn't want to go "searching" for unobtanium parts for the 85 when the time came. And I kinda don't have to. Which that part is nice. It's still an expensive endeavor, but in the end, we all die anyway. But this will be MY car, and restored MY way, and with tons of new parts. Or it may blow up in my face. But that's the risk I take.
