‘We’ll be there in the thick of it in the main show hall’

It’s an exciting time for us at Silverstone Auctions. Not only have we added another sale to our calendar for this year in the shape of a brand new sale at the Carole Nash MCN London Motorcycle Show on February 12, we also have a new addition to our motorcycle team. New motorcycle specialist Dan Lovis comes with a wealth of experience in the trade, with stints at Warr’s Harley-davidson and Harley-davidson UK under his belt. A passionate motorcyclist, he will bring both knowledge and enthusiasm to our growing team. It’s good to have him on board as we enter what is going to be a very busy period. Of course, signing up to stage a sale at London’s own bike show makes that inevitable. But both Dan and I are 100% committed to making the first of what we hope will be many auctions at the show over the next few years. Already we have more than 20 bikes consigned and we aim to offer 100-plus by the time sale day rolls around. And we have some strong leads to chase up. Dan and I will be doing our utmost to put on a great sale with something for everyone in the catalogue. Staging the sale at the London show is a great opportunity to put classic and collector bikes in front of a slightly different audience, too. While the event is mainly targeted at modern bike owners and riders, we’ve noticed that the typical classic bike collector has changed a little over the last few years. Plenty of the collectors I deal with now are a lot younger than many of the old-school collectors. Many are in their 40s or 50s and I’ve noticed that their collections tend to be more inclusive in terms of the ages of the machines. They don’t tend to stick to one era and we’ve had to adapt to their tastes by including a broad spread of bikes from different eras in our sales. That’s certainly our aim for the London sale. If the bikes on sale are going to be accessible to as many buyers as possible, so too is the sale itself. We’ll be right there in the thick of it at one end of the main show hall. The plan is to pause the live action on Saturday afternoon to allow as many show visitors to just walk up and experience the excitement and drama of a live auction. Viewing will be all day Friday and Saturday morning and you’ll have to register in the normal way to bid, but the action will be open to all. It’ll be a great opportunity for a lot of people to see first-hand how an auction works. We hope you can join us.