Lot of the Day: A 1913 Stanley Mountain Wagon That Sold for $109,200 Last Year Is at $75,000 on BaT

A century-old steam wagon is closing on Bring a Trailer today, and the most useful number on the page is not the $75,000 current bid. It is $109,200, the price this same chassis brought at Gooding Christie’s about thirteen months ago, when it crossed the block without reserve.

The lot

The car is a 1913 Stanley Model 810 Mountain Wagon, a 12-passenger, right-hand-drive steam wagon on a 136-inch wheelbase, offered on Bring a Trailer as Lot #271,318 (chassis 7019). Bidding closes Friday, October 30, at 1:30 p.m. Eastern. The current bid is $75,000 after nine bids. That is a bid, not a sale price, and the listing is not labeled No Reserve, so whether the seller has a floor, and where it sits, is not disclosed.

Per the listing, power comes from a boiler with a dual-fuel Baker burner and a Coleman pilot light, feeding a twin-cylinder, double-acting engine mounted horizontally under the rear of the car and geared directly to the rear axle. Four bench seats are trimmed in black tufted leather, the 28-inch wood-spoke wheels wear 38×5 whitewall tires, and the brakes are rear drums only. There is no odometer, and the title is a Montana document listing the car as a 1913 “SMCC,” for Stanley Motor Carriage Company. The seller reports a weight of about 3,600 pounds and a length of 204 inches.

Why a Mountain Wagon is worth a collector’s attention

Stanley built the Mountain Wagon for resorts and sightseeing operators in hilly country. Auction catalog notes from RM Sotheby’s place the first one in the fall of 1907, for a transport service in Estes Park, Colorado, with a 12-passenger Model 86 following in 1911 and production continuing through 1917. The Bring a Trailer listing gives 1909 to 1916. Sources disagree on the dates, and no reliable production count turned up in the material reviewed here. What the sources do agree on is that intact examples are scarce: RM’s catalog for a 1909 Model Z noted that no nine-passenger Mountain Wagon is known to have survived intact, and that several have been reconstructed.

That is the real collector argument for this lot. It is a purpose-built commercial passenger vehicle from the brass era, powered by a technology that lost the market to internal combustion within a decade, and the survivors are mostly the product of specialist rebuilds. Our coverage of the 1914 White Model Thirty, from a company that had built steam cars before turning to gasoline, and of the Somerset hoard of veteran cars covers neighboring ground.

One car, two auction rooms

According to the Bring a Trailer listing, the wagon was bought as a collection of parts in the 1970s by Stanley specialist Carl Amsley, who completed it in 1976, the year it received an AACA National First Prize. It then went to an owner in Idaho and joined the Stan Lucas collection in 1981, where it stayed in storage in Long Beach, California, for 44 years. The listing says the current selling dealer bought it in 2025, recommissioned it, and showed it at Audrain Motor Week in Newport, Rhode Island, in 2026, where it was driven on the Tour d’Elegance and displayed at the Concours d’Elegance.

The listing does not mention a prior auction, but the paper trail points to one. Gooding Christie’s lot page shows a 1913 Stanley Model 810 Mountain Wagon, chassis 7019, as Lot 44 of the Stan Lucas Collection Auction, restored by Amsley and part of the collection since 1981. It carried a $90,000 to $120,000 estimate, sold without reserve, and is recorded at $109,200. The sale took place on September 20, 2025, and all 99 lots were offered without reserve. The matching chassis number and the 2025 purchase date indicate this is the same car, and that the dealer is now selling what it bought there. Gooding’s page notes the catalog originally listed a different chassis number, 5461, corrected by a saleroom addendum. For background on that sale, see our earlier coverage of the Lucas collection and the 1911 Oldsmobile Limited that topped it.

The engine question

This is where the listing gets interesting. The Bring a Trailer listing says the car is “said to have been fitted” with a 20-horsepower engine during Amsley’s rebuild, and Gooding’s lot page also lists 20 horsepower. In the comments, the seller states that the car is in fact a 30-horsepower car, citing a form Stan Lucas filled out for the Stanley Register in 1990 and a measured 26-inch boiler flue tube plate, where a 20-horsepower boiler would measure 23 inches.

A commenter posting as StanleyRegister added context that reconciles the two accounts: the 26-inch boiler is the 30-horsepower unit, but the engine in this car is a later 4×5 20-horsepower condensing-era engine, a pairing Stanley never built at the factory but one found on many cars on the road today. That commenter’s account is unverified, and the seller disputes the 20-horsepower description. Taken together, the likeliest reading is a large boiler paired with a smaller, later engine, assembled by Amsley, which is a good description of a 1970s specialist rebuild rather than an untouched factory survivor.

Buyers who care about originality should ask for documentation on the body as well. The listing says the wood bodywork was repainted during Amsley’s work but does not say whether it is Stanley-built. RM Sotheby’s once cataloged a 1915 Model 820 as the only known Model 820 with its original Stanley-built body, a reminder that body originality is a live question on these cars.

Condition and concerns

• Rear wheel. A bidder pointed out a wobble in the right rear wheel in the listing video. The seller pulled the wheel on October 26 and said the mechanic believed it was the wheel and not the axle, with a fuller answer promised in the comments.
• Boiler documentation. The listing says the recommissioning included servicing the boiler and the fuel and water systems. It does not mention a boiler pressure test or certification, which is the first thing a prospective steam-car owner should request.
• Time in storage. Forty-four years in a collection, then a dealer recommissioning, means the car has had little recent mileage to expose problems.
• Cosmetics. The seller noted paint marring on the front cross member and posted photos of a fresh repaint and gold striping on that section.
• Paperwork. No odometer is fitted, and the title is a Montana issue listing the car by the manufacturer’s initials.

Comparable sales

Three comparable Stanley Mountain Wagons have been through the auction room recently enough to matter, and none of them is a clean match:

• 1909 Model Z, chassis 4279. Sold for $89,600 at the same Gooding Lucas sale in September 2025 against a $90,000 to $120,000 estimate. Gooding describes it as the believed final example built by Amsley, with a 20-horsepower engine.
• 1909 Model Z, chassis 5088. Sold for $132,000 at RM Sotheby’s Hershey in 2021, and recorded by Classic.com at $130,000 at Hershey in 2018. A Darryl Kendall restoration with a 2009 boiler, AACA National First and Great American Race history.
• 1915 Model 820, chassis 15055. Not sold at RM Sotheby’s Hershey in 2012 against a $200,000 to $250,000 estimate, then sold at Hershey in 2014 for $209,000. It was cataloged with its original Stanley-built body and a provenance through the collector James Melton and the Marshall collection.

Read carefully, these results span from $89,600 to $209,000, and the spread is explained mostly by body originality, documentation and provenance, not by the date. Two cautions apply. A published auction-house result and a Bring a Trailer bid are not measured the same way, so they should not be assumed to be like-for-like. And three cars across thirteen years is a handful of data points rather than a market. Still, the current $75,000 bid sits below every one of them, including the $109,200 this car brought last year.

What will decide the price

The deciding factor is demonstrated mechanical condition. Last September, this wagon sold in a room full of antique-car specialists at an auction where every lot was offered without reserve. Today it is on Bring a Trailer, in front of a broader online audience, where the wheel question and the engine and boiler configuration are being worked through in public comments. Steam cars are valued by whether they can be fired up and driven with confidence, and a bidder who sees a documented boiler test, a resolved wheel and a clear account of the engine has far less reason to discount for the unknowns than one who does not. Whether the reserve, if there is one, lines up with the bidding is a separate question that nothing on the page answers. This is analysis of a live auction, not a prediction of its result.

Bid and listing details were checked on the Bring a Trailer listing on October 30, 2026, before the auction closed. Photographs come from the seller’s listing and are credited in each caption.