Blue book has 2 prices - trade-in and market. We've generally gotten at or close to trade in at either carmax or trading at the dealer. Go to carmax and get an estimate before you go to the dealer so you know what your options are.

We got a carmax quote and then the dealership matched it, eventually. They came up on the trade-in rather than cutting the actual price of the car further.

Definitely get at least the dealer quote and a carmax quote if nothing else. Our experience has been newer, more expensive cars - Carmax gives the best price. We couldn't find any takers on the private market, even at just $500 over Carmax. This was for a 3 year old, $25k minivan.

However, when we sold our 10 year old Camry, we did much much better on the private market.

Sell it yourself, on craigslist, etc., if you want bluebook value.

Anonymous wrote:hah. Mine was worth $5500 and carmax offered me $700. Basically it meant they didn't want it at all.

OP here: Wow, that's bad. What did you do?

hah. Mine was worth $5500 and carmax offered me $700. Basically it meant they didn't want it at all.

They will never give you blue book value. They have another book called the black book that they use.

Clean it and declutter it.

According to Kelly blue book, my current car has value of about $5,000. I'm about to buy a new car and plan to trade this one in - first time doing so.

How close to that $5,000 can I expect for trade-in value? How hard can I negotiate the price?