RM Sotheby’s, Ritz Carlton, Amelia Island, March 10, 2018
RM held its auction on Friday, March 9 starting at 3PM as the Amelia Island Concours d’Elegance was for the second year in a row moved up to Saturday to avoid a threatening weather forecast. It made for a truncated auction week, slicing a day off the pre-auction viewing schedule. Gooding & Company remained at […]
GAA Classic Cars, Greensboro, NC, March 1-3, 2018
GAA Classic Cars’ Johnny Ransom had been suggesting for some time that I come to Greensboro for one of the GAA Classic Cars auctions. This spring auction’s schedule on the weekend before Amelia Island created the opportunity to combine both events in a single, long road trip. GAA Classic Cars is associated with the Greensboro […]
Leake Auctions, Oklahoma City, February 22-24, 2018
With $6.6 million in sales, a 72.4% sale rate and a $308,000 top sale (for a 2008 Mercedes SLR McLaren) Leake’s annual stop in Oklahoma City had a reduced consignment dictated by their change to a single lane but produced a total sale comparable with prior double-lane auctions. Seemingly routine in presentation, this may be […]
Worldwide Auctioneers, Scottsdale, January 17, 2018
Worldwide’s second year in the Valley of the Sun during Car Week (which really should be called “Auction Week” because that’s why everyone is here) featured a star studded consignment. As the numbers that follow show, the sell-through was down 15.1 points from last year. The total sale was off by over $5 million and […]
Gooding & Company, Fashion Square, Scottsdale, Arizona, January 9-10, 2018
This auction report got tripped up by a trip to Paris for the Retromobile week auctions which then, to compensate for an operator error on my part, had to go to the head of the auction report queue. Although not Gooding’s best Scottsdale auction (that was 2013’s $57.7 million followed by 2014’s $49.4 million) the […]
Video of the 1914 Peugeot L45 at the Bothwell auction
I realized today that during the preview of Bonhams auction of the Ann and Lindley Bothwell collection last November I’d made a short video of a walk around the car. It was entirely accidental as I was explaining what made the L45 so important (like its race history at the 1914 Lyon GP and twice […]
Bonhams, Les Grandes Marques du Monde, Le Grand Palais, Paris, February 8, 2018
The Grand Palais is fantastic, a vast high ceiling glass roofed spectacle with ornate ironwork (visible in the background of some of the shots of the cars) where early automobile shows were held at the beginning of the 20th century. Nowhere was the history of the Grand Palais more clear than at Bonhams auction this […]
RM Sotheby’s, Place Vauban, Paris, February 7, 2018
It snowed. In fact, it snowed so much wet, slushy white stuff that one section of RM Sotheby’s temporary structure became unsafe and had to be cordoned off on the day of the auction. It snowed so much (all of three inches, but for Paris it was the most snow in three decades) that the […]
Artcurial, Salon Retromobile, Paris, February 9-10, 2018
Artcurial’s Retromobile auction is “the Official Sale” of the Retromobile show in Paris at the Porte de Versailles Paris Expo center, a lavish, enthusiastic, celebration of all things old cars. Retromobile covers thousands of square meters of enclosed exhibition space with just about every kind of exhibitor from tightly focused one-marque clubs and tables covered […]
Bonhams Scottsdale, January 18, 2018
Set on the lush lawns of the Westin Kierland, where irrigation seems anathema to the restricted flow of Scottsdale showerheads, Bonhams Scottsdale Auction is an oasis of enthusiasm. From the full breakfast and hyper coffee on auction morning to the array of vehicles on the grass and in the gravel periphery, Bonhams sets a tone […]