Your car gets hit. The insurance adjuster looks at it and says the words nobody wants to hear.
Total loss.
You get a check. The tow truck takes the car away. And in your head, that is the end of the story. The car goes to a junkyard and becomes a cube of metal somewhere.
It absolutely does not.
That car enters an enormous, sophisticated, international marketplace. Within days it will be photographed, catalogued, and sold at auction to a buyer who may be in Poland, Nigeria, Dubai, or Mexico.
Gif by PureNoiseRecords on Giphy
And the company running that auction has one of the most beautifully protected business models in the country.
This story is stranger than it has any right to be. Come see.