ALL IN THE DETAIL
Why the right information can make a big difference to classic car prices
by Richard Barnett
Almost any car coming to a sale has some history with it. But even if the paperwork is scant, it’s important for bidders to know in advance what’s available to combthrough before bidding starts. But it should be easy to carry around too, rather than need a pack-horse. And that’s why the role of the catalogue should not be under-estimated.
Different auctioneers will clearly have different approaches to a catalogue, but whatever the page size and information it contains, the catalogue remains the sale’s shop window. Get the information right and the catalogue will fire up more interest than if it has scarce mention of supporting paperwork.
‘I think it is up to the individual auction houses how simple or elaborate they want to be and how important a role a catalogue play in the marketing of their sales,’ says SWVA’s Chris Holmes. ‘ We like to keep things simple to keep the costs down to our customers, we emphasise the providence and history and keep the technical spec down to the minimum. We charge £5, which includes a bidding number and it is printed and bound in-house.’
Just how big a catalogue is can be under constant evaluation, as Silverstone Auctions’ managing director Nick Whale explains: ‘After speaking with our customers we made a number of changes to the format of our catalogues. They told us they primarily wanted information on the specific lots in a pocket-sized format for convenience and ease of use at the sales.
‘For those with more time on their hands, generic and longer information is still included in a full description which is available in digital format only and reflected in the online listing. We continue to look for additional ways to make the auction process even easier and accommodating for our customers.’
Catalogues should be appropriate to the type of sale and cars being offered and Tim Gascoigne, auctions’ manager at Barons says page size is important. ‘ We try to strike a balance and produce a high quality catalogue in-fitting with our venue, without going too overboard with it, which allows us to keep the purchase price to a minimum. We use a size between A4 and A5, as we find that this is big enough to present photos and information on each car well, but not so big that it’s a pain to carry around.
‘Two or three photos of the car is usually sufficient as most people will have the car in front of them when they are reading it, so it is the description of the car and the key information that is most important.’
‘We emphasise the providence and history’