Nearly 70 Mercedes-Benz SL convertibles lined the Alpine, New Jersey, boat basin on a recent Sunday morning, their chrome and candy-colored paint jobs drawing a crowd of collectors mostly in their 30s and 40s. The cars, all from the R129 generation built between the early 1990s and early 2000s, have quietly become one of the hottest tickets in the modern-classic market, prized by millennials and Gen Xers chasing the dream cars of their childhoods.
Admission to the gathering was free, but it wasn't a walk-up affair — attendees had to apply in advance by submitting photos of their cars to the event's organizers, according to a report that cited the New York Post's original coverage. The meetup was co-hosted by Catfish star Nev Schulman alongside Andrew Glaser and Aum Bhatt, who runs the 129mocha social-media handle devoted to the model. After the cars assembled, the group set off on a scenic drive from the Alpine boat basin toward Harriman State Park in New York, trading stories and comparing prices along the way.
A 42-Year-Old With Three Mercedes and a Lifelong Itch
Schulman, a 42-year-old New Yorker who now owns three Mercedes modern classics, rolled up in his newest addition: a blue hardtop he found listed on Facebook Marketplace earlier this year for $6,000, with 72,000 miles on the odometer. He said he had long wanted the car and had finally reached a point where he could afford it, per the same report.
Tony Dinkins, a 38-year-old from Stamford, Connecticut, brought his 1997 hunter-green R129 SL500 hardtop, which he bought two years ago for $12,000. With 114,000 miles on the clock, Dinkins has restored the car himself after watching YouTube tutorials, and he noted that the same model appeared in Tupac's Picture Me Rollin' music video. He uses the Mercedes strictly as a summer car, reserving a Jaguar as his daily workhorse.
From $10,000 Beaters to $70,000 Trophies
The man helping drive that transformation is Andrew Glaser, the 40-year-old founder of Vantage Auto, a New Jersey dealership for modern classics, and owner of the Mercedes repair shop Wolfgang's in Tenafly. Vantage Auto, established in 1980 and based in Moonachie, specializes in low-mileage vehicles, modern classics and distinctive luxury models. Glaser estimated that R129 models once scooped up for around $10,000 can now fetch $60,000 to $70,000 in excellent condition, and he said he has recently sold dozens of them as demand has surged among millennials and Gen Xers with disposable income chasing cars from their childhood.
Recent auction results back up that climb. A 32,000-mile 1997 Mercedes-Benz SL600 sold for $85,000 on Bring a Trailer this past Friday, according to Bring a Trailer. That's a sharp jump from 2023, when an unmodified 1997 SL600 with 36,000 miles sold on the same platform for $32,555, as noted by CarBuzz. At the extreme end, a RENNTech-modified 1997 SL600 dubbed the SL74 pulled in 101 bids and sold for $449,999 earlier this month, with CarBuzz noting that the market now seems to be treating some R129s like exotic collector cars. Glaser said the appeal comes down to familiarity, engineering and nostalgia all at once.
A Generational Shift Playing Out Nationwide
The Alpine gathering reflects a broader reshuffling in the collector-car world. Auctions and online sales of collectible cars surged 10% to $4.8 billion in 2025, according to Hagerty, with online classic-car sales alone climbing 12% to $2.5 billion as younger buyers grew more comfortable purchasing cars sight-unseen. Hagerty reports that members of Generation X, millennials and Gen Z are taking over and redefining the market as baby boomers age out and downsize, with high-performance 1990s-and-later machines displacing the 1950s and 60s sports cars that long dominated the hobby. Hagerty CEO McKeel Hagerty has said the strength in the market is expected to continue into 2026.
The appetite is especially pronounced among the youngest buyers. A 2024 Hagerty survey found that 60% of Gen Z respondents expressed interest in owning a classic car, compared with just 31% of Baby Boomers, with Gen Z and millennials reporting they currently own classic enthusiast vehicles at rates of 32% and 30%, respectively, according to Hagerty's newsroom. The most common car Gen Z enthusiasts inquire about insuring is the Mazda Miata from 1990 to 1998, the same data shows. Still, the market isn't moving uniformly upward — only 70% of cars in the Hagerty Price Guide actually rose in value over the past year, according to Autocar, which notes that enthusiasts aged 30 to 60 are increasingly drawn to the cars of their youth at every price point.
Beyond the Roadster: A Wider Wave of Nostalgia
Glaser has also noticed a shift in who's showing up. At a recent car event in Newport, Rhode Island, he estimated that at least half the people approaching his business were women — a detail that echoes a broader cultural moment the Wall Street Journal has chronicled around the rise of the so-called hot girl car trend, in which fashionable young women embrace beat-up vintage Broncos and other old-school SUVs as status symbols. Glaser said modern-classic enthusiasm is thriving in New York, where some collectors meet in downtown Soho as early as 6 or 7 a.m. before setting out in their cars.
He frames the R129's resurgence as part of something bigger than one roadster or one boat-basin meetup — a broader nostalgia craze that also touches early-2000s designer handbags, film cameras and flip phones. Glaser said some buyers are simply reconsidering older products after years of prioritizing whatever's newest, and that older cars offer a more analog driving experience than today's models, which tend to be dominated by touchscreens and computerized controls. For engineering nerds, the R129 backs that up on paper too: Hagerty's buyer's guide notes the model introduced a first-of-its-kind roll bar that deploys automatically in 0.3 seconds if a rollover is detected, and its convertible top relies on 11 or 12 hydraulic cylinders depending on the model year.
