‘The next few sales will be very interesting’

Recently there’s been much doom, gloom and, at best, uncertainty around the classic market. Less so at the more affordable end, to be fair, though some Ford and Jag values, for instance, have been a bit wobbly. But it could be worse. At the expensive end, anyone who invested their pension fund in Ferraris or other exotica in the past five or six years is registering somewhere on the gloomy scale about now – prices have really bombed.

So, what on earth happened at Anglia Car Auctions on January 25? I was glad to be able to take refuge in the press box as you could barely move in the sales hall thanks to the record crowd of 2400 people who turned up. Among them

I also spotted a number of dealers I’ve not seen at the sale before. Hunting for stock?

If so, they were up against some very stiff competition. The auctioneer struggled to keep up with all the hands flying up and only one of the first 39 cars offered failed to sell. That made prices strong too, with nearly a third of cars selling for above or within their estimate – something any auction house could only dream of last year. Are we seeing some kind of post-brexit bounce, or was it simply a one-off produced by pent-up winter ‘gate fever’, whipped up even further by what was, to be fair, a very good catalogue of classics?

Our small gathering of market commentators in that press box could do little more than shake our heads in disbelief. It was like we had time-travelled back to the market’s peak in 2014/15, but with 50 per cent more people.

The results of the next couple of classic sales will be very interesting indeed.