RM Sotheby’s, The Elkhart Collection, Elkhart, Indiana, October 23-24, 2020
The Elkhart Collection had some exceptional vehicles. A small fortune had been spent on maintaining them. Many were competition cars, for the most part presented in apparently race-ready condition. And each lot in the sale represented a personal tragedy for some innocent entrepreneur, religious group, corporation or non-profit. The sale was held by order of […]
“Berlina Aerodinamica Tecnica”
The Three B.A.T.s Offered at Sotheby’s Contemporary Art Evening Sale On October 28, 2020 In a Friday Surprise, on October 16 RM Sotheby’s circulated a press release announcing that the three B.A.T. design concepts would be offered as a single lot as part of Sotheby’s regular Contemporary Art Evening Auction on October 28, just twelve […]
RM Sotheby’s, Shift/Monterey, August 14-15, 2020
The culmination of RM Sotheby’s summer of Online Only was the online replacement for their annual blockbuster auction at Monterey, for online styled “Shift/Monterey”. With a total sale of $30¼ million it was at the top of the Monterey replacements with a total changing hands over twice either Gooding’s $14.4 million or Bonhams $12.8 million. […]
RM Sotheby’s, Online Only: Open Roads, The European Summer Sale July 14-22, 2020
RM Sotheby’s is gobbling up the online space for major auctions. They hit the ground running with the quickly restructured RM Auctions Palm Beach auction, followed up two months later with a late May Online Only presentation, then in quick succession did a remarkably successful European sale on June 11, this European Summer auction and […]
RM Sotheby’s Online Only: The European Sale
June 3-11, 2020 Featuring the Petitjean Collection This was RM Sotheby’s third online only auction, succeeding its canceled second annual auction at Techno Classica Essen in Germany. The feature was the 96 cars from La Collection Petitjean, all offered at no reserve after decades of static storage and, as it turned out, indifferent cosmetic attention […]
RM Sotheby’s, Amelia Island, March 6-7, 2020
The End of the Beginning We didn’t know it at the time, but RM’s last session of its two-day Amelia Island auction at the Ritz Carlton marked the beginning of the end of live collector car auctions in 2020, at least until the so-called novel coronavirus (designated “2019-nCoV” by the WHO, distinct from the acute […]
RM Sotheby’s, Place Vauban, Paris, February 5, 2020
RM Sotheby’s left some $14 million on the table with just three lots this year (Jaguar D-type XKD 520, Daytona Spider 15535 and the Batmobile-ish Lamborghini Veneno that is not reported here but brought a reported high bid of $4,347,370 and had kids barely old enough to shave fawning over it in the preview), carving […]
RM Sotheby’s, Arizona Biltmore, January 17, 2020
RM Sotheby’s experienced the same paradigm shift as most of the other Arizona auctions, a shortage of expensive cars and a general shift to more accessible consignments. The median transaction was the lowest since 2011; the average sale was the lowest since 2012 which also marked the last time RM had a total sale this […]
RM Sotheby’s, Taj Ma Garaj, Dayton, Ohio, September 28, 2019
Well, we’re a little late with this auction report. It got backed up with a succession of sales with more cars, but doesn’t deserve to be overlooked. Taj Ma Garaj was John Dixon’s passion, reflecting both his love of all things Porsche and also his inimitable if not unique desire to express his vision of […]
RM Sotheby’s, Olympia London, October 24, 2019
RM Sotheby’s moved both the date and the venue of its annual auction in London. The date slid 6 weeks later from the early September schedule of 2013-2018 while the venue moved to the Olympia exhibition and conference centre in Kensington. Neither seemed to have beneficial effect with the sale total the second lowest since […]