Markets and pricing are fluid as everyone knows. Ask 10 people and you will get 10 different answers.
Is yours a base, active or a sport package?
A car similar to yours sold here in Denver about a year ago, a 1998, Red, Sport (good), Automatic (not good), 48,800 miles (great!), 1 owner (sweet!), it was on both Craigslist and ebay and sold for $6500 very quickly.
The manual shift makes your car more desirable. I would put a higher price on it and see if you get any interest. $6500 would be the bottom floor for me personally.
I can see why you
“have someone that wants it very badly locally” because your car sounds like an extremely nice, unmolested example of a 318ti, and those are getting harder to find with each passing year.
Good Luck!