It's March that means Amelia Island has just concluded.
Except this year had a slight twist.
RM took the bold step this year to move away from Amelia Island and set up their own event 391 miles north - ModaMiami. An RM organised and curated event which was positioned to "shake-up" the traditional concours world.
Gooding & Co, Broad Arrow and Bonhams all presented their vehicles alongside the Amelia Island event as usual.
Here are our five takeaways from the auctions in Amelia and Miami.
1 - We're turning a corner
Much was made in 2023 of a tumultuous year with plenty of negativity about what the future might hold.
We wrote a piece in November 2023 stating that perhaps that was unjustified and we our analysis actually showed the beginning buyer and seller expectations converging.
Well, that looks to be coming true.
The delta between the estimate mid-point and the sales price across the Gooding, Bonhams, RM and Broad Arrow auctions was -8% on average.
In other words, on average if you took the estimate mid-point a car would sell on average for 8% below that point including premium.
To put that into context, for the majority of last year that figure was -15% or more.
2 - Bigger and better than ever on (almost) all fronts
When looking at the key metrics for the auctions almost all showed a positive picture.
The total dollar volume of vehicles sold was $182m, up 4% from 2023 and the highest dollar volume in history for this batch of auctions.
Average sale price was at an all-time high at $467,000, up 2% from 2023.
This was led by Gooding & Co, with RM having the second highest average sale price followed by Broad Arrow and then Bonhams.
The total number of listings and total number of sold listings were also at all time highs with 473 listings and 390 vehicles sold respectively.
3 - Not all rosy, two key metrics were down on last year
Two metrics that struggled were sell-through rate and the top sale price achieved.
Sell-through rate for the four auctions stood at 82%.
For those who read our 2023 Year In Review will know that the sell-through rate for last year across all auctions was 67%.
So 82% might seem mighty impressive.
It is until you realise that Amelia Island always performs very strongly on sell-through rate.
In fact, the sell-through rate hasn't been that low at the Amelia Island auctions since 2019.
In 2023 it was 85%, in 2022 it reached 91%.
The other metric that was down was the top sale price achieved.
Gooding & Co took the top spot here with their 1903 Mercedes-Simples 60hp 'Rois des Belges' selling for $12,105,000. Coincidentally it also set a world-record as the most-expensive pre-1930s car ever sold at auction.
Even at that price it was c. $6,000,000 below the top sale in 2023, a 250 SWB Cali Spider, again sold by Gooding.
In our opinion, don't place too much significance on this metric, one consignment can swing this figure hugely either way. It's not reflective of the wider market.
4 - Gooding get the MVP award
Normally when we write these articles it's RM that lead the show.
This time, it's Gooding's turn.
They led on (almost) all the key metrics.
Dollar volume was higher than any other auction at $67,000,000.
Average sale price was higher than any other auction at $610,000.
They took home the highest sale of the weekend with the 1903 Mercedes-Simplex mentioned above.
They were only pipped into second position by Broad Arrow on sell-through rate (91% vs 87%) and number of sold listings (137 vs 110).
Almost a clean sweep.
5 - Broad Arrow get the most improved award
In 2021, if you walked into Amelia Island the Broad Arrow name wouldn't appear anywhere.
That was for a simple reason, they hadn't sold any cars at auction by then.
The first auction held was in August 2022 at Monterey.
Wind the clock forward to 2024, and Broad Arrow not only have a major presence at the event thanks to their owner, Hagerty, now holding Amelia Island in its event portfolio, but they also are growing tremendously well.
As mentioned above they topped the pile when it came to sell-through rate and number of sold listings.
What's perhaps more impressive is the growth rate.
In 2023, Broad Arrow sold just shy of $27,000,000 worth of vehicles.
In 2024, that number stood at $59,400,000.
That's growth of 120%.
Part of that growth is down to the number of vehicles they've sold, up from 76 last year to 137 this year.
Part of that is also down to increasing the quality of vehicle sold.
In 2023, their average sale price at Amelia Island stood at $350,000.
In 2024, that number was $434,000.
That puts them in third place out of the 4 auction houses when it comes to average sales price, around $100,000 behind RM but around $300,000 ahead of Bonhams.
What's the saying 'direction is more important than speed'.
Well, it seems they might just have their direction and speed both tracking the right way.
One to watch.