Hershey is Sweet for RM
RM Auctions held its first sale in Hershey during the AACA Fall Meet on Friday. Built around the amazing collection of Pat Swigart and his wife Helen, RM outdid itself, selling all but three of the 117 lots offered to a standing room only crowd in one of the Hershey Lodge ballrooms with the cars mostly displayed outside in tents.
The numbers speak for themselves: 97.4% sold, $12,323,320 changed hands, 47 sold under low estimate but another 25 sold over the high catalog estimate. The ballroom was full to the point where the fire marshall must have been having second thoughts.
When the 1911 Oldsmobile Limited sold (for $1,500,000 hammer, $1,650,000 with commission) a whole crowd of people left the ballroom but the remaining crowd was still SRO.
For those who have been predicting the demise of antique and classic car collecting, the median year (i.e., half older half newer) of the sold lots was 1931. A surprising number of the bidders who were there were (at least by the standards of the AACA) young, and they were as well informed as any group of collector car buyers in the world.
It was at least as impressive as RM's performance earlier this year in Maranello. Although Hershey is familiar territory the AACA and the Hershey crowd has been hostile to auctions for years and only slightly softened up by Don and Rob Williams' Hershey auction over the last few years.
High points other than the Limited were the DuPont Model G Le Mans Phaeton sold for $704,000; the Duesenberg Model J Murphy Dual Cowl Phaeton for $1,650,000, the 1912 Locomobile 6-48 Model M Sportsman Torpedo Tourer for $660,000, the Stutz DV32 Dual Cowl Phaeton for $797,500 and the 1911 Selden Model 40R Varsity Roadster for $220,000.
The numbers speak for themselves: 97.4% sold, $12,323,320 changed hands, 47 sold under low estimate but another 25 sold over the high catalog estimate. The ballroom was full to the point where the fire marshall must have been having second thoughts.
When the 1911 Oldsmobile Limited sold (for $1,500,000 hammer, $1,650,000 with commission) a whole crowd of people left the ballroom but the remaining crowd was still SRO.
For those who have been predicting the demise of antique and classic car collecting, the median year (i.e., half older half newer) of the sold lots was 1931. A surprising number of the bidders who were there were (at least by the standards of the AACA) young, and they were as well informed as any group of collector car buyers in the world.
It was at least as impressive as RM's performance earlier this year in Maranello. Although Hershey is familiar territory the AACA and the Hershey crowd has been hostile to auctions for years and only slightly softened up by Don and Rob Williams' Hershey auction over the last few years.
High points other than the Limited were the DuPont Model G Le Mans Phaeton sold for $704,000; the Duesenberg Model J Murphy Dual Cowl Phaeton for $1,650,000, the 1912 Locomobile 6-48 Model M Sportsman Torpedo Tourer for $660,000, the Stutz DV32 Dual Cowl Phaeton for $797,500 and the 1911 Selden Model 40R Varsity Roadster for $220,000.
It was quite a show.
This is the Selden, one of very few built and only six known to survive but one of the most significant ... if infamous ... automobile marques in history.
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