That very early '53 would command a very serious price now days. I saw and drove a '54 that would be near priceless. The story leading up to that... 1967 was the last year the big Healey's were imported into the US due to not mustering up to US safety standards. Way too powerful for the brakes they wore, crash protection, small side markers, etc. The '66 had some improvements, the '67 even more, but still not enough. So almost immediately the '67 MKIII Roasters especially became very collectable. Add to that that mine was a factory custom order by a rich broad in Pebble Beach with the all the pro racing upgrades and a seriously beefed up engine to make it the best handling, fastest and safest BJ8 around. So when I sold it in '76 I got over 4 times what I paid for it. The car collector I sold it to had one of the extremely rare '54 Corvette Nomad Wagon's that were built, and let me drive it. If I remember all these years later I think he said only 5 or 6 of them had ever been built. He also knew another collector who had an also extremely rare '54 Corvette Corvair that was a fastback model. He showed me pictures of it, and of both of them together. The story went that the two of them were constantly trying to get each others rare Vette away from each other to own the rare pair. No idea if that ever happened, but I would think they would be among the most expensive to buy Corvettes ever made, and my old BJ8 would get top dollar easily as a custom built. Today you can still buy fairly nice 66/67 BJ8's for well under a $100K, some for half that. I offered the current owner $100K for my old one about a dozen years ago, and only got a laugh for an answer.
