The Monterey Car Week is probably the biggest fair for cars to be auctioned at the same time outside of virtual market places. All notable auction companies are present and for several days lot after lot is called up.
The 2013 edition saw a total of 93 Ferraris on offer, only 4 lots (4,2 % of all Ferraris) have been withdrawn, funny however, all of them have been Mecum-lots and all of them belong to the modern car range (S/N 52855, 77185, 104375 and 123121). 17 cars, representing 18,1% of all lots didn’t sell – we will come back on these later.
Bonhams (9 lots), Gooding (22 lots), Mecum (20 lots), RM (31 lots) and Russo and Steele (11 lots) have been present. The non sales came from Bonhams (1 of 9 lots, dns-quota 11,1% ), Gooding (3 of 22 lots, dns-quota 13,6%), Mecum (7 of 20 lots, dns-quota 35%), RM (1 of 31 lots, dns-quota 3,2%) and Russo and Steele (5 of 11 lots, dns-quota 45,5%). The assumptions are that either, Bonhams and RM did have the correct estimates or the more attractive lots or they managed to attract to the most potential bidders compared to their competitors.
15 cars came from the 1950s, 26 from the 1960s, 15 from the 1970s, 16 from the 1980, 14 from the 1990s leaving a total of 7 cars that have been built in the new Millennium. The most recent car was #170202, a California sold by RM for $170,000 (est. $145,000 - $185,000), the eldest car on offer was offered by Russo and Steele's, #037S, a 166 Inter Berlinetta, that was sold for $1,050,500. 30 lots achieved results that exceeded the Million-$-barrier. The “cheapest” car sold, was #32205, a 308 GTSi offered by Russo and Steele.
Auctions of such size are often a good opportunity to get an actual keen sense for the market’s development, either for the market as a whole or for certain models. Sometimes this mechanism fails if the cars on offer are rarely offered like a non-actual F1 car or a 333 SP. With others you can compare the complete market with the auction result. The FXX was not sold at a high bid of 1,9 million USD. 6 of the FXX have been on offer this year and the asking price is ranging from 2,1 million USD to slightly above 3 million USD, so the car #145369, offered by Gooding’s was priced correctly with an estimate of $2,300,000 - 2,600,000.
The “Dino-Hype” seems to be over and prices are stabilizing on a high level of about $300,000 to $450,000. This may probably be related to the exceeding supply of Dinos to the market at that level. The achieved values for the two “standard”-F40s is surprising. Even with a low mileage and coming from the original owner, prices of above 1 million USD seems to be high if we compare it to the European market, where a good F40 is actually around 500,000 to 600,000 USD.
We believe, our good friend, Mike Sheehan, was somehow satisfied with what he rates as Ferrari’s “MacDonalds-index”, the Daytona. The cars sold ranged from $429,000 to $700,000, however, the market still needs time to close the enormous gap of those achieved values.
It’s a rare occasion to see at least 3 NART-related cars at the same place even if the cars can not be more different: The definitive highlight and the biggest seller was one of the 10 original NART Spiders built on the 275 GTB, # 10709. RM sold this one for 25 million dollars, said to be the highest price sold for a road car ever. It’s copy, #8039, offered by Russo and Steele's, didn’t sell and Gooding's “Marion” NART Spider (#14299), built by Michelotti on a Daytona and formerly owned by Steve McQueen, reached a price slightly above the estimate.
There are sure cars and results that will be of individual interest for each of you. We have attached a link to the complete result list from Monterey Car Week’s auctions, enjoy sneaking through the list and sorting with a lot of gusto of your own.
Monterey Car Week Auctions.xlsx