As the market crosses the year’s midpoint, most industry observers have turned their attention to the spate of sales scheduled for mid-August in and around Monterey, California. The lineup this year – as always year – is perfection, with California Spyders (both SWB and LWB variants), an Alfa Romeo 8C 2900, a Teardrop Talbot-Lago, and even a Porsche 911 GT1 Rennversion, just to name a few. There is certainly plenty for buyers to consider.
Part of that consideration, of course, is understanding current market conditions. As shown by Hagerty’s Market Index, an open-ended stock-market style index for collector cars, the market is down 11 percent from its 2022 high, showing a general cooling. The story extends far beyond the numbers, though, so Hagerty recently asked several collector car dealers, auction executives, and industry specialists for their thoughts on the current market. Their responses show just how nuanced the market is.
“Rational” was one word offered by Derek Tam-Scott, principal at the specialty dealer OTS and Co. “Every so often [a price] will go kind of wild, and every so often something perfectly good sells cheaply, but prices for things are easy to justify or explain,” he commented. “[The market] is not balanced too strongly in favour of buyer or seller.”
Barney Ruprecht, VP of Auctions at Broad Arrow, agreed that the market “is in a better place today than at the end of 2023. There appears to be less uncertainty overall.”
“Strong but difficult” was the response from Dave Kinney, founder of US Appraisal and publisher of the Hagerty Price Guide. “The era of salesmen waiting for the customer has changed to the era of salesmen actually having to sell their cars and get the customer interested.”
Long-time American dealer Mark Hyman shared, “the market is far more selective than it once was.” Kinney confirmed this sentiment by saying the marketplace is “very, very picky.” This selectivity favours the enduring hallmarks of condition, quality, and provenance. According to Hyman, “really good quality and really important older cars are performing better than ever.” From Tam-Scott’s vantage, “Something that’s really extraordinary gets people to come out of the woodwork and say, ‘I don’t really care what the market is doing, …I’m going to pay up for it.’ ”
The August auctions tend to bring the year’s biggest and best consignments, which is to say the exact types of cars that our panel of experts note is in demand. From that standpoint, the week looks like it should have plenty of headline sales. But choosiness can be tough to predict, and will ultimately be the wildcard for how successful the sales results are judged.
