It’s 1988 and you have just won a phone contest rewarding you with 36 Corvettes from the years 1953 to the current year of 1988. What do you do?
If you were carpenter Dennis Amadeo from Long Island, in 1988 you would choose to sell all 36 to artist Peter Max for $250,000 cash. Really, for the times, Amadeo came out great, as he ended up with a wad of cash and didn’t have to worry about storage fees or what to do with all those cars. Peter Max now had a collection of 36 Corvettes for his art project.
So, what happened to all those Vettes? The art project never came to be, so the cars were left alone deteriorating since 1989 in various garages in New York. If the story ended here it would be quite the tragedy, but luckily, there is a possibility of a fairytale ending.
Peter Heller, Scott Heller, the sons of Scott Heller, and Gary Spindler have bought the Peter Max collection of Corvettes. And according to our friends at Jalopnik, They are going to start with the ‘53 and with the help of a Corvette expert, begin the restoration process.
They are hoping to have the cars ready for auction in the spring but there is always the chance that the restorations might take a little longer, and lets be honest that’s less than 6 months away. If they are able to get them all ready for auction, much like Amadeo, they would prefer to sell the collection as a single lot.
Which begs the question, what would you pay to own a Corvette from every year from its debut in 53 to ’88?