Every week, we send out the “SCM Insider” email, chock full of breaking news, auction results, select videos, and a reader poll to more than 30,000 rabid collectors like you. Our question in the June 30 newsletter asked readers to choose one of four outcomes for the 2009 Monterey weekend. Forty-four percent of you thought things would be grim, and that $100m, the amount realized in 2006, was all we would see. Twenty-six percent thought sales would be stable at about $140m. Twenty-five percent were feeling particularly chipper, and agreed that the totals would soar to $200m (their choice was labeled, […]
Every week, we send out the “SCM Insider” email, chock full of breaking news, auction results, select videos, and a reader poll to more than 30,000 rabid collectors like you. Our question in the June 30 newsletter asked readers to choose one of four outcomes for the 2009 Monterey weekend.
Forty-four percent of you thought things would be grim, and that $100m, the amount realized in 2006, was all we would see. Twenty-six percent thought sales would be stable at about $140m. Twenty-five percent were feeling particularly chipper, and agreed that the totals would soar to $200m (their choice was labeled, “What recession?”) and just four percent thought it would be a “half price sale” totaling $70m.
Now that the last car carrier has left the Monterey Peninsula, the final tent has been taken down, and Ferrari 360s and 430s are no longer as thick as Ford Fusions in downtown Carmel-by-the-Sea, we can settle back and analyze what the market had to say.
First of all, the overall totals were encouraging, with 561 of 836 cars selling (67%), for a grand total of $119,784,028.
The total numbers were down just 14% from the year before, and as we mention elsewhere in this issue, when weighed against the declines in the stock market, housing, or even contemporary art, 14% seems nearly inconsequential.
The buzz
But even more important than the results was the mood of the weekend. Having lived through the 1991-92 collapse, where Xanax dispensers were installed at the entrance to every auction, and Aston Martin and Ferrari owners were seen wearing signs around their necks saying, “Will Trade Cars for Food,” the mood this year was decidedly upbeat.
After all, over 500 cars did sell, and over $119m did change hands. That’s certainly a far cry from the $25m realized in 2003.
And from 2000 to 2001, the overall weekend totals dropped from $54m to $32m-a 40% decline. If we had seen the same this year, the total would have gone from last year’s $139m to just $83.4m, in which case there would surely have been red Castrol R running down Calle Principal.
In each auction tent, there was a sense that buyers were being thoughtful, but still willing to pull the trigger when they saw value. As we have said many times in the past two years, lesser cars, in lesser condition, fell hardest, while the strongest no-stories examples continued to do well. Not as well as last year, but strong nonetheless.
One of the questions bandied about before Monterey had to do with the number of auction companies, and the number of cars for sale. Collectors wondered if there were “just too many auctions, and just too many cars.”
Of course, the longer an auction house has been established in Monterey, the more it views the peninsula as its rightful turf. Surely RM would like a return to yesteryear, when, as the Rick Cole Monterey Sports Car Auction, it owned the weekend.
But over the years, Christie’s (now essentially replaced and surpassed by Bonhams & Butterfields), then Russo and Steele, followed by Kruse, then Gooding, and now Mecum, have all staked out their place on the (very expensive) turf.
More is, well, more
From a collector’s point of view, the more auction companies, the better. This year, buyers had 836 cars to choose from, compared to just 542 the year before-an impressive 54% increase in the number of lots offered.
And don’t forget, by comparison, the 900-pound gorilla that isn’t at Monterey, Barrett-Jackson, offered 1,239 cars and pulled down $108m at its peak in 2007. So who’s to say the Monterey Peninsula couldn’t handle another 300 or 400 cars, if properly cataloged and presented.
Frankly, from an editorial perspective, life was much simpler when it was only Rick Cole we had to cover. I did the auction reporting myself, often standing shoulder to shoulder with Rick Carey (Automarket Journal) and Phil Skinner (Old Cars Weekly). At that time, we were the only guys who actually cared about reporting what was happening.
Now, as our Operations Manager Jennifer Davis-Shockley reports on page 46, our planning for Monterey literally starts months in advance, and I sometimes wonder if the Operation Overlord D-Day preparations were as complicated. Analyst, B. Mitchell Carlson has offered to parachute in to Pebble Beach to avoid having to wrangle a parking pass, but so far we’ve been able to restrain him.
Tough love
That’s not to say it was an unrelenting collector car lovefest. Russo can’t be happy with a near 50% decline in sales, from $9.1m in 2008 to $5m this year. And Bonhams dropped from $21m to $14.3m-surely bittersweet given just how hard their team has worked over the past few years to develop a presence in Monterey.
While neither RM nor Gooding matched their results of 2008, both delivered respectable returns and continue to be the premier events of the weekend.
We’ve yet to get any official results from Kruse, but our reporters on site saw just a handful of cars, in a nearly empty tent the day their auction was scheduled; this is just another reflection of the organizational difficulties that are besetting this once-dominant auction company.
Of course, the first-timer-success-story-of-the-weekend award belongs to Mecum, selling $14.2m, besting both Russo and nearly equaling Bonhams. But this total has to be leavened by the fact that the Cobra Daytona made up $7.68m of that total, and they will be hard-pressed to come up with a similar car next year.
Monterey was really a better weekend than we could have hoped for, and it affirmed that collectors of cars have decided that their values are not nearly so ephemeral as those of other collectibles. The trading market for cars, both in velocity and in terms of overall dollars realized, remains respectably strong.
Finback, anyone?
For no particular reason, the SCM office has decided it needs a vintage four-door saloon for our outings. First choice would be a finback Mercedes, preferably an injected 220SE with a floor-shift, but condition trumps options, and a solid heckflosse in tasty colors, even powered by a diesel, would be considered. No automatics, please. Second choice would be the earlier ponton-again, six-cylinder preferred. Perhaps this acquisition will evolve into the next “Drive an SCM Car Across the Country” saga. If you have a likely suspect, or know of one, contact me at keith.martin@sportscarmarket.com, 503.261.0555 x 210