‘Will live audiences ever return to the sale room?

As we approach our final sale of what has been a difficult and extraordinary year, I’ve been thinking about some of the changes there have been in the auction world. Some have been forced upon us, but some have been quietly developing for months, or even years. Like everything, the way auctions work is changing. And some of those changes will be permanent.

Many of those changes are led by the internet and, since the Covid pandemic, developments have accelerated dramatically. Pre-covid, around 60% of all bids at our sales were already placed online. Now, of course, all bids are made either online, by telephone or by commission bid. It’s hard to predict if live audiences will ever return to the sale room.

Bidders are getting more comfortable with the online format, and the social interaction that has been part of sale days may be a thing of the past as technology takes over. We might miss that human buzz, but it may be that the increasing use of technology actually brings in more potential bidders – and a new generation of techsavvy owners and collectors.

Another trend is the gradual demise of the catalogue. Some auctioneers stick to a traditional, printed catalogue, but the trend is towards online listings – with maybe a print out of lots available on viewing days.

While it’s nothing to do with the march of the internet, I’ve also been wondering whether there’s a time limit on connections between bikes and famous previous owners or riders. While bikes with A-list celebrity former owners show no signs of becoming any less desirable, what about race bikes from the ’50s and ’60s? Will tomorrow’s collectors value a link to the big-name riders of that era in the same way that the generation that grew up with them?

But, despite the relentless advance of technology, we still have some hardcore, old school customers. I still get handwritten letters and printed photographs from defiantly non-tech owners. There’s something familiar and reassuring about that. While we’re happy to embrace the future at H&H, we’ll never forget the past.

Former car racer and bike fanatic Mark Bryan has been a motorcycle specialist at H&H since 2014