The Pebble Beach® Concours d’Elegance Best of Show Winner 1934 Bugatti Type 59 Sports
The Pebble Beach® Concours d’Elegance broke new ground in 2024, naming this original and unrestored 1934 Bugatti Type 59 Sports as Best of Show, an unprecedented departure for a concours that has ever- (or almost ever-) honored bright and shiny over-restored visions of great, sleek, powerful classics. At the Tour d’Elegance on Thursday morning – […]
Artcurial Motorcars, Saint-Tropez, France, June 29, 2024
A pop-up sale featuring area collections from the south of France, this appears to be an opportunity venue for Artcurial which may (or may not) be inserted in its annual calendar. The location was pleasing and luxurious, but the sale room was cramped and cars were sold from photos, not crossing the block. There were […]
Mecum Auctions, Harrisburg, PA, July 24-27, 2024
Mecum’s Harrisburg auction at the Pennsylvania Farm Show Complex has taken on a whole new stature as the only successful consignment collector car auction in the Northeast. Mecum has done what no one else has been able to do. I had a list of 1,100 cars gleaned from Mecum’s website before the auction. A few […]
Bonhams, Bonmont Golf & Country Club, Cheserex, Switzerland, June 30, 2024
Bonhams returned to the picturesque Bonmont Golf & Country Club in Cheserex, Switzerland for its fifth auction at this location with no sale held in 2022 due to Covid 19. No records were broken in this 54 car lot sale (plus 9 motorcycles and 2 child’s cars not described here) and while some lots brought […]
RM Sotheby’s, Cliveden House, Taplow, Berkshire, U.K., June 12, 2024
Not having budget to travel to the U.K., nor to stay at the site, I watched this first-time sale unfold online, recording the block hammer bids. I thought I’d polish up old skills from the COVID era and compose an auction report from the auction video, the catalog, and the online photos. That proved to […]
The 2024 Monaco Auctions, May 9-11, 2024 – Artcurial, Bonhams and RM Sotheby’s
Every two years the Auto Club of Monaco presents the Monaco GP Historique. The course is set up for the Monaco GP two weeks later with pits, paddock, grandstands and the track arranged for the GP but instead of Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc (congratulations Charles on your maiden hometown win) it’s old cars on […]
Barrett-Jackson, Palm Beach, South Florida Fairgrounds, April18-20, 2024
Palm Beach is Barrett-Jackson’s longest running auction outside Arizona, a continuing success that draws enthusiastic bidders, and droves of barely-informed tire kickers out for a day at the South Florida Fairgrounds to look at cars, not livestock. Barrett-Jackson’s search for viable venues not irrevocably seized by competing auction companies [from Wisconsin] continues with a Fall […]
Mecum, NRG Center, Houston, April 4-6, 2024
Visiting a Mecum auction like Houston is like taking a snapshot of the breadth and depth of the collector car market. Events like Scottsdale, Amelia and Monterey get most of the press attention for their seven- and even eight-figure cars. Everyone likes to read about them, their rarity, design, technical features and value. But at […]
Gooding & Co. Mullin Collection, Oxnard, April 26,2024
There’s a lot to break down from Gooding & Company’s auction of “Selections from the Mullin Collection” auction held onsite at the Mullin Museum in Oxnard. But there’s one glaring fact and that is that collectors’ appetite for great old cars, even the rusty restoration projects that made up much of this sale, is strong […]
Gooding & Company, Amelia, February 29-March 1, 2024
I’ve known David Gooding since he and Miles Morris were the public face of Christie’s collector car auctions, through the inception of RM Auctions and into the present day when Gooding & Company became the embodiment of the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance. I cataloged David’s sale of the “Mormon Meteor” and the Peter Williamson Bugattis, […]