What's going on here?
Bonhams kicked off their UK season with the Goodwood Members' Meeting sale this weekend. We've got the rundown.
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Headlines?
Sell-through rate has stabilised. Bonhams delivered a sell-through rate of 70% (99 cars went under the hammer with 69 of those selling).
The proportion of no reserve cars was far lower than we've seen recently with 27% of cars offered at no reserve - down from 35% the year previous.
The auction lacked any real heavy hitters, resulting in an average price of cars sold at £73,913 - down from £91,000 in 2023 and £99,000 in 2022.
What went well?
Bonhams sold a one of 10 Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren 'Crown Edition'.
With just 50 miles on the clock and having been in a private collection in the Middle East it was guided at £200,000 - £300,000.
It sold for £425,000 inc premium.
That's a new World Record for a 'standard' SLR and tops the 'Crown Edition' car which sold last year for £379,500.
If the vehicle was staying in the UK, Import VAT and Import Duty would take the total price well north of £500,000. We're now heading into 722 territory. Great result for Bonhams.
Bonhams also offered a 1994 Jaguar XJS 4.0 Convertible straight out of a private collection within Jaguar.
The car had never been registered and displays only 310 miles from new.
The previous world record for any XJS Convertible stood at £51,145.
Bonhams' XJS guided at £100,000 - £120,000. In our book, a valuable car but punchy estimate nonetheless.
It didn't sell but reached a high bid of £94,000. If it had sold with premium added in that would've been £110,920. A new world record amount and over double the previous XJS Convertible record.
What didn't?
A 2007 Ferrari 599 GTB Fiorano F1 with 36,000 miles on the clock where "servicing may be required before further use", sold for £55,200. That's the cheapest 599 GTB F1 we've seen in history.
A 1951 Bentley Mk VI Saloon, guided at £15,000 - £18,000, sold inc. premium for £5,520. The second lowest price we've seen for a Mk VI (inc. all sub-models) since 2007.Â
Any other data nuggets?
When looking at price performance by decade the only decades to exceed the midpoint of their estimate on average in percentage terms were the 30s, 60s, 70s and 80s.Â
The gap between buyers and sellers has certainly closed since last year with an 8% delta on average between the estimate midpoint and the sales price. That's about half what we saw for a lot of 2023.
Anything else?
Finally, for every price guide we publish the median price since 2020 for each model.
Amazingly, if you'd have taken that median price and compared it to the price achieved by Bonhams it was only £3,818 off on average.
That's not taking into account the history of the vehicle, the condition, nothing.
Wild that our standard valuation guides are only £3.8k out against the actual sale price.