This could be a big year for Ferraris at auction, starting with a 1964 Ferrari 250 LM being offered at Rétromobile in February. Photo by Photo by Kevin van Campenhout/ Courtesy Artcurial
We don’t pretend to have a crystal ball at Hagerty Insider. At this time last year, for instance, none of us would have forecast that land war would break out in Europe and dramatically impact energy costs and supply chains. That said, we do have a lot of data, as well as analysts who spend all day, every day, following the gyrations of the collector car market. That in mind, we put them on the spot and asked them to proffer predictions for 2023. And in case you think we’ll let any of our team forget these come December, check out how we scored last year’s predictions.
1. A Ferrari will sell for $40M+.
Photo by Kevin van Campenhout/ Courtesy Artcurial
With Michael Mann’s Ferrari movie coming out in 2023, the marque’s return to Le Mans as a factory team, and a 250 LM consigned to the Rétromobile auctions in February, it could be a big year for Ferraris at auction. —John Wiley, manager of valuation analytics
2. Classic car imports from Europe (and particularly the United Kingdom) will continue to surge.
Even though the British pound has recovered somewhat from a summer downturn that saw it briefly drop to near parity with the dollar, the economy in the UK remains in the doldrums. With the war in Ukraine grinding on and continuing to drive up energy costs, it might be unfashionable (to put it mildly) for enthusiasts on the Continent to add to their collections. American collectors may well fill the vacuum, as they did at many of the late summer and fall auctions in the UK. –Adam Wilcox, information analyst
3. The average value of a collector motorcycle will surpass $10k USD for the first time ever.
Appreciation in the Hagerty Motorcycle Price Guide accelerated in 2022, with the average dollar value of a #3 motorcycle increasing four times more than during the previous year. As motorcycles enter further into the mainstream collector hobby and even make inroads in the the art world, expect this appreciation to continue. –James Hewitt, senior information analyst and editor of the Hagerty Motorcycle Price Guide
4. Appreciation for lower priced (< $250K) vehicles will slow in 2023, while $1m+ vehicles will appreciate faster.
During the pandemic, prices for mainstream collector cars increased dramatically. Inflation and economic pressures slowed that growth in 2022. Reserves for mainstream vehicles became less common in 2022, which suggests weakening demand. Expect that to carry into 2023 as the Federal Reserve effort to tamp down inflation continues to cool consumer activity. In contrast, top-tier classics tend to behave differently. Their appreciation sped up later in 2022, and likely will continue to perform well in 2023. –John Wiley
5. An ABC Kei car will sell for over $50,000.
For those who don’t know, the ABC Kei cars are a trio of sporty pint-sized cars built for the Japanese domestic market—the Autozam AZ-1, Honda Beat, and Suzuki Cappuccino (the latter is a member of the 2023 Hagerty Bull Market List). The current record for a member of the trio is a 1993 Autozam AZ-1 that sold for $35,530 in September 2021. Buzz around these cars has continued to grow, and if a clean example of the rare Mazdaspeed or M2 1015 versions come to auction, it could surpass $50,000. –Adam Wilcox
6. No NFTs will sell at a collector car auction
Crypto isn’t disappearing entirely from the collector car hobby, but given the drama and dropping values in the world of digital currencies, expect the experiments selling non-fungible tokens to end for now. –Adam Wilcox
7. Online auction growth will continue to slow.
Last year I incorrectly predicted that that online auction sales would double sales in 2022; they saw “only” a 45 percent increase. With the bidding frenzy of last summer seemingly past us, I expect that growth to slow even more, to less than a third. Mind you, that would still be $2 billion for the year—more than 10 times the online total just five years ago.—John Wiley
The virus hastened the rise of online sales, as connoisseurs of vintage vehicles found more time to spend with their socially distanced hobby.
Published Feb. 18, 2021Updated Feb. 19, 2021
A Chrysler at Bring a Trailer in San Francisco early last year. The company’s online sales rose 60 percent in 2020, to $398 million.Kenny Hurtado for The New York Times
Joe Boyd, a civil litigation lawyer in Macon, Ga., had been scouting for a 1970s Toyota Land Cruiser for some time. Last May, in the thick of the pandemic, he pounced.
“I’d just started my own solo practice, but all the courts were closed because of Covid-19,” said Mr. Boyd, 49, who spotted a fully restored 1975 model in an online ad. “So it turned out to be a great time for me to do this.”
Grabbing a buddy, he flew some 900 miles to Garage Kept Motors in Grand Rapids, Mich., and drove away with his dream car — which came with a refinished matching trailer and its own roof-mounted surfboard — for $27,000.
Rather than back away from classic automobiles because of the pandemic, buyers flocked to them, sometimes in stunning numbers. Online auto sales and auctions, starting to gain acceptance among collectors before the virus, took off, and some tent-pole auctions with limited attendance claimed new records.
“Collectors tell me, ‘There are a lot of things I can’t do right now because of Covid, but driving my classic car isn’t one of them,’” said Spencer Trenery, president of Fantasy Junction, a longtime classic-car broker in Emeryville, Calif.
“We feel really sorry for the many businesses that are suffering,” he added, “but that just hasn’t been our experience.” While foot traffic in Fantasy Junction’s showroom plunged 90 percent or more, gross sales — many from online international buyers — were higher in 2020 than in 2019, Mr. Trenery said.
Many collectors who could work remotely or were independently employed found more time to pursue their vehicular interests, choosing to quarantine themselves in what some might consider the ultimate safe distancing bubble — the cockpit of a classic car.
“They weren’t burning up 10 or 15 hours a week in commute traffic,” said Ian Kelleher, chief marketing officer for RM Sotheby’s.
In October, Sotheby’s easily sold three ultrarare Alfa Romeos for $14.8 million, with spirited bidding from four countries. Earlier that month, in a two-day auction that combined online buyers with a limited audience in Elkhart, Ind., the firm sold 240 cars for some $44.4 million, drawing 2,500 bidders from 53 nations.
Three rare Alfa Romeos on display at Sotheby’s in October. They sold for nearly $15 million.Timothy A. Clary/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
An eight-day Mecum auction in July in Indianapolis — previously postponed by the pandemic — notched record sales of $74 million. That figure included a highest-ever price of $3.85 million for a Mustang. The auctioneer billed the car, a 1965 Shelby prototype once driven by Ken Miles of “Ford v. Ferrari” fame, as “the most important in the history of the marque.”
Perhaps the most singularly impressive results came on Sept. 5, at another of the year’s few live auctions. The event, at the historic Hampton Court in London, featured 15 superlative classics in Gooding & Company’s first international sale. The auction had been canceled in April, but “we saw a window of opportunity and seized it,” said David Gooding, the company’s president.
As it turned out, proceeds topped $44 million, with a 93 percent sell-through rate. Records were reported for a highest average price per car, $3.1 million, and for the highest auction amount yet for a Bugatti — $12.7 million for a 1934 Type 59 sports car. The Bugatti also drew the highest price for a publicly sold collector car in 2020, Gooding & Company said.
Even so, “2020 was rough — the whole live auction industry was down,” Mr. Gooding said. His firm, based in Santa Monica, Calif., grossed some $125 million, well below its best years, he said, “but we feel grateful for what we still managed to accomplish and for what we learned.” For example, the pandemic prompted the company to hasten its introduction of Geared Online, a web platform featuring both vintage cars and automotive memorabilia.
Hagerty, a firm in Traverse City, Mich., that insures collector cars and specialty vehicles and tracks market data, believes the volume of collectible automobiles that changed hands in 2020 rose as much as 14 percent, with most sales online and in personal “private treaty” transactions.
Joe Boyd bought his Toyota Land Cruiser in Michigan last spring.Joy Boyd
“The necessity to be alone or in small groups pushed people outdoors,” said McKeel Hagerty, the firm’s chief executive. “More people got out to drive — to go camping, hiking or just for pleasure driving. Plus, gasoline was really cheap.
“The Great Recession years of 2008 to 2011 gave us our first understanding of just how resilient the collector car market has become,” Mr. Hagerty continued. “We saw very little panic. People held on to cars until they were ready to sell.”
Mr. Hagerty views the pandemic as an “accelerant” for the trend toward internet sales by traditional auction houses, storefront dealers and sites like Bring a Trailer.
“It’s not a complete substitute,” he said, “but live auctions are expensive, involving transportation, even overseas shipping, high commissions and many employees. It’s also an intensely personal contact business, where owners of especially desirable cars may need years of coaxing before opting to sell.”
Still, Mr. Gooding insisted, “the tent-pole setting will always be more productive for low-volume, high-value cars.”
In 2018, Gooding & Company sold a 1935 SSJ Duesenberg — one of two in existence — for $22 million at Pebble Beach, Calif. Once owned by the actor Gary Cooper, the light-gray roadster became the most valuable American car ever auctioned.
“I can’t picture that vehicle in an online format,” Mr. Gooding said. “Such a car does its best being seen live in a live bidding atmosphere.”
Nonetheless, for reasons few could have anticipated, 2020 was huge for online sales. And Bring a Trailer, an upstart in San Francisco, became a breakout star.
Car collectors “now see this as a useful and effective way to pursue their interests,” said Randy Nonnenberg of Bring a Trailer.Kenny Hurtado for The New York Times
“We were already on our way to a great year,” said Randy Nonnenberg, a co-founder and the site’s president. It was coming off a torrid 2019, with roughly $240 million in sales, a high point. Then, in the middle of a pandemic, the firm experienced a gold rush.
Bring a Trailer’s 2020 sales climbed more than 60 percent, to some $398 million. In all, the site was selling nearly 1,000 cars a month.
“Nobody knew what would happen in March or April,” Mr. Nonnenberg said, “but in the past nine months many people tasted and tested what it was like to transact online in a socially restricted environment. They now see this as a useful and effective way to pursue their interests, including collectible cars.”
Mr. Nonnenberg also noted that Bring a Trailer had benefited from its acquisition in June by Hearst. “Supporting buyers and sellers is still a human process,” he said of its online bidding and sales operation. The larger company helped recruit and hire staff that doubled his site, based in a brick warehouse in the Potrero Hill district, to 60 employees.
It also didn’t hurt that, according to Hagerty, roughly half of classic car owners have six-figure incomes, with a median of $125,000 for buyers of post-1980 cars such as Ford Mustangs, Chevrolet Corvettes and Ferrari 360s.
The hobby appears to have legs. Millennials and collectors in Generation X requested 53 percent of Hagerty’s insurance quotes in 2020. And well-heeled millennials were behind only baby boomers in mulling coverage of vehicles priced at $10 million and up, Hagerty said.
Last year prompted important shifts in psychology among buyers and sellers, said Mr. Trenery, of Fantasy Junction. “It created an increase in liquidity on both sides,” he said. “When Covid came along, so much of life moving forward became unknown. People looking at a car they’d wanted for years asked: ‘If not now, when?’”
Phil Linhares with his 1949 MG TC in Oakland, Calif.Kelsey McClellan for The New York Times
For Phil Linhares, 81, of Oakland, Calif., that moment came in November when he spotted an online ad by Classic Promenade Motors in Phoenix for a 1949 MG TC.
“I’d seen one when I was a boy living in Modesto,” said Mr. Linhares, a retired curator at the Oakland Museum. “It was bright red, sitting in the Tucker dealer’s showroom window. I thought it was the most beautiful car I’d ever seen.”
Mr. Linhares’s pulse quickened when he read the Arizona car’s original “build sheet.” Its English maker had completed the cream-colored TC 71 years before, on Aug. 8, his birthday.Correction: Feb. 19, 2021
An earlier version of this article misstated the role of McKeel Hagerty at the Hagerty insurance firm in Traverse City, Mich. He is the chief executive officer, not the chairman. A version of this article appears in print on Feb. 19, 2021, Section B, Page 5 of the New York edition with the headline: Socially Distanced, in the Cockpit of a Classic. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
Des autos qui ont fait entrer les sorties de grange dans une autre dimension. Cinq ans plus tard, quel est l’héritage de cette vente ? C’est ce qu’on a voulu savoir en s’entretenant avec Céline Baillon, petite fille de Roger Baillon.
When news broke this month that a 1963 Ferrari 250 GTO sold privately for $70 million, it was a good reminder that between all of the auctions we talk so much about, there’s also a lot going on in the private market.
Is this GTO sale part of a shift away from auctions and a return to the private market? Using Hagerty’s insurance and auction data, we found that more buyers and sellers are in fact dealing privately so far this year. And while top-shelf cars have struggled to meet reserve in recent months, it seems that prospects are rosier on the private side.
By the numbers
Our data indicates that, especially at the high-end of the market, things are shifting toward private transactions. In 2015, the number of $1M-plus vehicles sold at auction continued its trend upward, while the number of such vehicles sold on the private market dropped. This difference, in favor of auctions, shrank in 2016, then grew again in 2017, and now appears to be trending back to parity in 2018.
HagertyMarket for $1 million vehicles
We’ve observed that, typically, more than 30 percent of $1M-plus vehicles that are part of a collection have gone to auction every year. This share peaked in 2015 at over 46 percent, but that number (adjusted for the partial year to date) is down to 27 percent in 2018.
A much smaller share (only 2.6 percent on average) of vehicles at all price levels go to auction every year. The broader market also shifted towards auctions in 2016 and 2017 with a peak of almost 2.9 percent in 2016, but that now appears to be an anomaly as the share of vehicles sold at auction in 2018 is down to 2.4 percent. The share sold privately is also increasing in 2018.
HagertyMarket for all vehicles
What’s driving the shift from auctions?
As prices raced ahead in 2015, taking a car to auction ensured that it got in front of a lot of buyers and that it got in front of them quickly. With more speculators in the market in 2015, who may not have had as many genuine ties to the hobby, an auction was the best way to reach buyers.
Now that the market isn’t as red hot, cars at an auction with stories and red flags are more likely to go unsold, which hurts chances of a later (private) sale. Another possibility is that there are more and more ways to connect buyers to sellers today.
RM Sotheby’s1998 McLaren F1 ‘LM-Specification’
For especially high-dollar cars, auction fees can be seriously hefty, so some sellers who know there is a strong demand for their vehicle can opt to have a broker handle the transaction at a much more affordable cost. There’s also less risk if your car doesn’t meet reserve (when that applies), and you don’t have to deal with transport costs.
“Values have gone up in the last few years, so the economics make more sense for private sales in the eyes of many owners,” says Hagerty marketplace director Colin Comer. “A lot of high-end sellers are also interested in staying under the radar, which is a lot harder when you’re dealing with a public auction. Not everyone wants that kind of attention.”
RM Sotheby’s Group Top 10 Sales of 2017
Total sales are $526,095,018. Results are listed in USD and are inclusive of buyer’s premiums. Sale total includes select post-sale transactions as well as the Ferrari F2001 sold in Sotheby’s Contemporary Art Evening Sale in N
1.
1956 Aston Martin DBR1
$22,550,000
Monterey
2.
1959 Ferrari 250 GT LWB California Spider Competizione
It’s the appeal of analog: Your non-digital automobile provides hands-on experiences that younger generations want, but that the computer screen and self-driving cars cannot duplicate
Older engines invite hands-on tinkering and the acquisition of craftsmanship skills
This article is based on the same draft as our November 1st online article, “But Mine is Better”. This version appeared in the February 2017 issue of Forza Magazine. While we do not normally publish two different versions of the same draft, we felt that the editors at Forza produced a fine article and more importantly, a different take, on the same core premise. We hope you enjoy it.
Most Ferrari market followers would agree that values for Enzo- and Fiat-era Prancing Horses peaked close to the 2014 Monterey auctions and are now off by around 30 percent. Similarly, many Montezemolo-era cars peaked in late 2015 and are now off by the same percentage. In either case, you might never know values were falling if you looked only at asking prices—and the reason is something psychologists call the “entitlement effect.”
From an objective point of view, the value someone attributes to something should not depend on whether they own it or not; in reality, we all know that’s not the case. Hundreds of university experiments have proven that college students, at least, are surprisingly reluctant to trade a coffee mug they had been given for a bar of chocolate they were offered, even though they did not prefer coffee mugs to chocolate when given a straight choice between the two.
Simply put, once someone owns something, they irrationally place a higher value on it compared to an equivalent item—be it a coffee mug, a chocolate bar, or a Ferrari—that is owned by someone else. Comedian George Carlin might have said it best: “Have you ever noticed that their stuff is sh.t and your sh.t is stuff?”
A couple of examples spring to mind. In 2014, a client saw that a 246 GT had sold at Gooding’s Scottsdale for a new high water mark of $473,000. I knew that car well, having sold it in 2006 and having followed its later high-quality restoration at Dugan Enterprises in Oceanside, California.
My client figured his own Dino coupe, which had been in dead storage for decades, was “better” than Gooding’s practically perfect example and therefore worth even more. I pointed out that his car hadn’t been treated to a recent restoration, and instead, due to sitting for many years, almost certainly had frozen brakes, frozen shocks, and perished rubber, needed a massive service and a long list of deferred maintenance issues resolved, and was still wearing its original 40+year-old paint, carpets, and leather, none of which are known for aging well.
I’ll leave out the back and forth that ensued and just say we eventually agreed to disagree. More germain here is the fact that, if that same owner had been presented with the two Dinos side-by-side, there’s no possible way he would have chosen his own as being more valuable—unless, of course, he owned it.
Going a step beyond the endowment effect, behavioral economists describe something called “loss aversion,” which is people’s tendency to value avoiding loss more than acquiring an equivalent gain. In other words, it’s better to not lose $5 than to gain $5. Nowhere is that more evident than in the land of asking prices.
When the market’s rising, everyone piles on to reap the rewards. When the market falls, everyone, including people who should know better, hangs onto their toys to the bitter end and beyond, somehow convinced the falling market doesn’t affect their car. Remember the entitlement effect?
In late 2015, I purchased a nice 550 Maranello for $90,000. After spending around $12,000 on services, I sold it instantly to a dealer for $130,000. That dealer turned around and quickly sold the car to another dealer for $150,000. That dealer then listed the 550 at $175,000 and…nothing. The market peak had passed, and prices were on the way down. When I last looked up that car, its asking price had come down to around $160,000, but by then the market had fallen even further.
Around that same time, in May 2016, I received a 550 Maranello on consignment. It was the same year as the earlier 550 and fully serviced, with better options but more miles. There was no instant sale this time. After several weeks, it finally sold to the only interested buyer for $105,000.
If you as a seller want to know what your Ferrari is really worth, don’t go looking for the highest auction prices or the highest asking price online. Instead, pretend that you’re buying a car that’s just like yours, research the market to figure out how much you would offer for such a car, subtract the usual 5 or 10 percent for haggling, and then factor in a realistic opinion of where the market’s heading. If you’re lucky, your car’s worth that much.
The moral to the story? No matter how much they might wish, sellers do not control the market; buyers control the market. There will always be sellers, and if there are excited buyers they will bid the price up. If the buyers lose interest or see an unfavorable market trend, they tend to sit on their wallets and wait. Unless a seller can convince a buyer that this car is the one he really wants at his price, any rational buyer will defer a decision to see if something better comes along.
Call them whatever you like – “modern collectibles” or the “emerging segment” or even “later-model performance cars” – the supercars built from the 1980s through the Ford GT of the early years of this century certainly had the pedal to the metal in terms of rising values in the classic car marketplace during 2015.
Hagerty, the insurer and vehicle valuation tracking company based in Traverse City, Michigan, has shared its annual collector car market recap for the past year. Highlights include:
A record $1.45 billion in sales at North American classic car auctions in 2015.
An amazing 21 percent increase in the average sales price — $79,100 — at those auctions.
But that increase was at the top end of the market. The average median price — $26,400 — at those auctions increased only 4 percent.
Hagerty customers added 17 percent more 1980s-and-newer vehicles to their collections compared with only a 2.3 percent increase in pre-1980s classics.
RM Sotheby’s flagship Monterey sale, held during the world-famous , continues to raise the bar for collector car auctions year after year. This annual auction event in mid-August is part of the largest and most important yearly gathering of collector cars and enthusiasts from around the world, and this year will be joined by a spectacular third evening.
On Thursday, August 13th, RM Sotheby’s will offer the most valuable single collection of motor cars ever presented at auction. The “Pinnacle Portfolio” comprises some of the greatest and most iconic European sports and racing cars of the 1950s and 1960s, juxtaposed against some of the world’s most coveted modern super cars. Simply put, it is a rare collection of automotive distinction. http://www.rmauctions.com
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