Teen sells rare 1969 Camaro for $2,500 then bought it back years later for $150K

A man who sold his super rare 1969 Chevrolet Camaro Z/28s Rally Sport for just $2,500 when he was a teen tracked it down and bought it back for a staggering $150,000 decades later. 

Businessman Glenn Stearns, from Maryland in the US, was just 16 when he bought the Camaro from a friend for $1,500.

At the time, neither Stearns nor his pal knew that the car was a rare and valuable vehicle. 

And, after racking up several speeding tickets and having his license suspended, Stearns’ then-girlfriend urged him to sell the Camaro, which he did – for $2,500. 

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He regretted selling the 1969 Camaro Z/28s RS

We’ve seen plenty of stories of people spending time, money, and effort tracking down their old cars, such as this 85-year-old who became emotional after he found his old 1967 Camaro four decades on, or this guy who hired a private detective so he could be reunited with his long-lost 1979 Trans Am.

In the case of Stearns, his regret after selling the car kicked in fast – not least because he started to realize that the car was more valuable than he’d thought. 

Speaking on an episode of Jay Leno’s Garage, Stearns revealed that even after the Camaro Z/28s RS had been sold, he continued to receive phone calls from car enthusiasts keen to buy it – leading him to suspect that the car could be more valuable than the $2,500 he sold it for.

And his suspensions were correct.

He managed to track down the car decades later

Although Chevy produced around 20,000 Camaros in 1969, only 20 of them were Camaro Z/28s RS.

Of those 20, just five were made with this color configuration, meaning Stearns had accidentally let a super-rare vehicle slip through his fingers. 

“I realized the mistake I’d made when I sold it,” he said.

“Because you’d put it in the paper back then… there’s no Google, you don’t know what you have and a guy came, gave me the money and just left.” 

Two years on, Stearns began looking for his beloved Camaro with the hopes of buying it back, but the hunt didn’t end until 2019 when the car turned up at auction. 

With his heart set on a reunion, Stearns parted with a staggering $150,000 to win the auction.

That’s sixty times what he sold it for in the early 80s and one hundred times what he originally bought it for. Ouch.