VEHICLE AUCTIONS SHIFT INTO GEAR DESPITE PANDEMIC
Telephone, online bidding is on the rise, but pandemic makes market hard to predict
Vancouver-area car collector Garry Cassidy invited a few friends over during October's Barrett-jackson fall collector car auction. Normally, Cassidy would be at the auction in Scottsdale, Ariz., with friends Don Voth and Hank Funk. Not this time. Pandemic travel restrictions nixed that.
But the enthusiasm was high as a dozen friends watched the collector cars go across the block on the big screen in Cassidy's 8,500-square-foot car showroom in Langley, B.C.
Cassidy has been busy replacing the 37 collector cars worth nearly $3 million that were lost in a garage fire three years ago, so he was a telephone bidder connected to the Barrett-jackson auction. He bought a plum mist 1967 Chevelle with a beefy 427-cubic-inch engine and fourspeed manual transmission.
The hammer price was US$35,000 plus 10 per cent buyer commission. Ironically, the seller at the Barrett-jackson was Vancouver-area classic car dealer Wayne Darby. It was one of 10 cars Darby had taken to the Scottsdale auction.
The rise in telephone and online bidding is representative of a shift in how collector vehicles are being marketed and sold in these uncertain times. Auction companies have had to find ways to sell cars remotely. Even the vaunted Hemmings Motor News, the bible of the collector car hobby for half a century, is selling cars in online auctions.
And the popular bringatrailer. com website has been auctioning cars online through a daily news feed received by collectors worldwide since 2014. The company listed 1,370 vehicles for sale in September and had a sales rate of 79 per cent.
Not surprisingly, the televised fall Barrett-jackson auction had a very different look and feel compared to previous auctions. Only 6,000 registered bidders and consignors could attend the auction. Mandated health provisions were strictly adhered to, including social distancing, as the collector vehicles crossed the block.
“I was very impressed by how they did it,” Darby says. “It was an experiment to see if they could hold the auction during the COVID crisis, and they pulled it off.”
The fall Barrett-jackson auction featured the sale of 442 collector vehicles that sold for US$235 million.
Investment-quality cars like Ford GT models brought top dollars at the auction. But the market was soft for the lower priced collector cars, including classics, hot rods and muscle cars.
Darby says the big BarrettJackson Scottsdale auction will go ahead in January, but there will be a limit of 20,000 people allowed to attend. That's compared to 300,000 people who usually attend. The auction will be televised and seen by millions of enthusiasts around the world.
The Toronto Collector Car Auction was conducted online for the first time in November, with 101 classics offered for sale to the highest bidder. The online sale featured about half the number of classics that were available in past live auctions held at Toronto's International Centre, and prices were off compared to last year's sales. But a fair number of collector vehicles sold, including a 1936 Auburn convertible that topped the sale at $135,000.
A 1962 Chevrolet Impala Super Sport convertible featuring a 409-cubic-inch engine and four-speed transmission sold for $93,000, and a modified 1946 Ford pickup crossed the online auction block for $25,000.
There were significant bargains, as well. A fully restored bright red 1940 Ford convertible went for $33,000, and a Canadian-built 1954 Meteor Rideau Skyliner with the industry's first see-through Plexiglas roof — one of only 235 produced — seemed to be a bargain with a hammer price of $11,500.
Online and live auctions still result in thousands of vehicles finding new owners, but the current market is much more difficult to predict.