What Do You Wish Was Under Your Christmas Tree?

Christmas is just around the corner, but if you’re like me, you know the thing you want isn’t available at your favorite big-box retailer or E-commerce platform. Christmas presents are hard to come by for some of us enthusiasts, at least if the criteria is to find a gift that provokes a child-like response of joy from its recipient.

Some of us own vehicles that are so rare, so expensive to keep running, or so thoroughly restored over the years that specific items that could bring us that joy are completely out of reach. When you are the preeminent 1980s Lincoln owner/restorer in all of Automotive Journalism (bows down), the eBay “saved searches” delivered to your inbox at 3 a.m. every morning are a potential Christmas miracle just waiting to unfold.

Sometimes you get lucky: I once set a proxy bid for an NOS side view mirror (with the correct thermometer graphics for Project Valentino) on eBay for $900, as it popped up when I was traveling for The 24 Hours of Lemons. My high bid was likely to scare everyone off, but I couldn’t stop worrying how much this important part was going to actually set me back when the auction ended. (I was lucky enough to get it for $89.)

But there are so many things I wish could be under my Christmas tree this week, stuff that maybe fell off a shelf at a car dealership decades ago and wound up on eBay. Take this fella, for example.

It’s the dash trim for a 1989 Lincoln Continental, with all its chrome foil and polished acrylic in perfect condition. New in the box, presumably never installed, and currently for sale on eBay Motors. The dash trim on my 1989 Lincoln Continental isn’t in bad shape, but I had to use a Molotow chrome paint pen on the shiny bits, and needed a lot of polish to get the small scratches out of the acrylic. I can see where I did the restoration, and sometimes that does bother me. But not enough to spend the asking price on eBay for its replacement.

This part is just one thing someone in the Hagerty Community wishes was under the Christmas tree. So the question remains for everyone else, and please do us all a favor and answer it.

What Do You Wish Was Under The Christmas Tree?