We were all stunned three years ago when a fairly nondescript, but beautifully preserved light-blue Toyota Corona sedan sold for a whopping $16,000 at the Silver Auction in Fort McDowell, Arizona. The same car sold again in May of 2009 for $36,000 at the Mecum Indy sale, as part of a collection owned by the estate of a Toyota dealer. All of the cars in the collection did quite well. New all-Japanese car shows are regularly popping up, mostly in California. At Hagerty's Cars That Matter, we continue to add vintage Japanese cars to the price guide. As far as we know, we're the first to index the trend in this "emerging market" and what we see looks pretty good. The blue chip Toyota 2000GT is way up from its 2006 value, and has enjoyed a marked increase of late after a year of realtive inactivity. We've broken that out in a separate index to better show how the more affordable Toyotas and Datsuns weathered the economic storm quite well with overall values up 10-15 percent from 2006. We’ll be keeping our eye on early cars from the Land of the Rising Sun.

-Dave Kinney, April 2010, Publisher of Hagerty’s Cars that Matter.