I've been looking into retrofitting my 03 with the factory rear door sunshades. There are a plethora of them available in junkyards, even with the entire door panels in my color. However, both eBay and local junkyards seem to want an arm and a leg. One junkyard that has at least six barely-damaged E53s in stock, including two with rear door cards and sunshades in my color, wanted $300 for the set and wouldn't budge. eBay I see them for crazy prices too, usually $50+ for just the shades without door panels. These cars get totaled for miniscule damage due to the high cost of repair, so shouldn't that drive down the price of used parts?

How is this possible? Do people actually pay these prices? I can understand when they were new, people would spend a mortgage on fixing them regularly, but I'm pretty sure most of the people interested in spending that kind of money have new BMWs. I spent $6,300 to buy my car and it's in pristine shape. People who buy $6k cars don't spend insane money maintaining them, generally speaking.

Anyone care to chime in? Should I do more junkyard hopping? Will prices ever go down? Should I go back to driving my Toyotas and Mazdas?

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2003 3.0 5MT Topasblau
Purchased in 2016 and sold in 2024
2012 35d Platingrau