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Collector Car Market – The Beginning of The End?

1964 Ferrari 250 LM TIM SCOTT
1964 Ferrari 250 LM

By Rick Carey, Auction Editor

The collector car market cratered in 1989-90.

What were the significant events that preceded the collapse?

1. Auction companies popped up everywhere trying to get a piece of a rapidly growing number of transactions, increasing prices and resulting commissions;
2. Cars sold to speculators, not collectors;
3. Individuals like Hans Thulin took on huge bets on the collector car market’s continued rise; Thulin eventually failed to consummate his purchase of GTO 3607 at Monaco in 1990 for $10.7 million and a year later it was sold for a reported $6.9 million to cover the gap;
4. Prices inflated by significant percentages in periods measured in weeks, not years;
5. The same, identical, cars turned over again and again, sometimes in months;
6. Promoters (auction companies, dealers, brokers, speculators, ‘investors’) argued, “Buy now, it will cost more next month”;
7. Cars crawled out of the woodwork and were sold quickly, with little serious research, to new money buyers who relied upon superficial descriptions and prior transactions to support their valuations;
8. New money was everywhere;
9. The popular press touted “investment values”;
10. High end Italian cars were taking off in price, leaving pre-war Classics in their dust.

Take those ten points and apply them to 2014. Most, if not all, of them are being repeated.

If that isn’t the prescription for a bubble, a boom, and an impending bust it’s hard to describe what it would be.

We’ve seen new auction companies debuting every quarter. Currently, another new auction company is seeking backing, including from an asset-liquidation specialist company [floorplanning collector cars for re-sale? That’s about as insane as it gets.]

Finance/leasing companies are approaching collectors with mega-dollar cars offering loans at bargain basement rates.

Opportunists are everywhere. Uninformed new money is flooding the market. They don’t know what they’re buying (seven-figure GTCs, half-million dollar Dinos?) and are only following fashion – like sheep behind the Judas Goat headed for the slaughter house.

Ferrari 330 GTC
1968 Ferrari 330 GTC – This is where it gets exciting: Ferrari 330 GTC s/n 10937. This picture is from RM’s New York Auto Salon and Auction in 2002 where it sold for $85,250. At RM Monterey in 2014 it’s estimated at $650-750,000, at the low estimate (and don’t be surprised at all if it exceeds it) an increase of 7.6 times in twelve years, about 18.45% compounded annually.
1971 Lamborghini Miura SV
1971 Lamborghini Miura SV – With Lamborghinis, too, the sky’s the limit. Miura SV s/n 4942 sold for $825,000 at RM Monterey in 2010. Four years later it’s estimated at $1.8-2.4 million, a compound annual rate of return at the low estimate of 21.5%.

This summer’s reading list could include tomes like Boombustology, Kindleberger and Aliber’s updated Manias, Panics and Crashes, Chancellor’s Devil Take the Hindmost and of course good, old Tulipomania. They’re all recounting the same story of unsustainable, leverage-fueled excess.

The RKMotors auction in Charlotte last Fall was an example of hedge fund money deployed in pursuit of hot profits. When the sale fell on its face the whole auction organization was dismantled nearly instantaneously. Money guys have no patience. Their presence in the world of collector cars is anathema to long term value. If the market turns they will crowd the turnstiles getting out, taking any money available in the rush for the exit.

The Monterey auctions, with their new formats and many recycled cars, could be a watershed moment.

The best thing that could happen in Monterey is that the no-reserve Ferrari 250 GTO sells for $35 million, re-setting expectations to more reasonable levels. It’s the one thing that might scrape the froth off the frenzy and return expectations to less exuberant levels. Don’t expect it to happen, though. If it sells big the hot money buyers will see it as the vindication of their exuberance and head into the salons of Bonhams, RM, Gooding, Mecum, Rick Cole and Russo and Steele with their paddles held into the air in sky’s the limit bidding.

1966 Shelby Mustang GT350H
1966 Shelby Mustang GT350H – What’s up with Shelby Mustangs? Apparently not much. Here is RM’s lot #202, a ’66 GT350H, shown at Mecum’s original Belvidere, Illinois ‘Spring Classic’ in 2007 where it sold for $147,000, then at Mecum’s Indianapolis version of the ‘Spring Classic’ in 2010 for $127,200. It’s estimated by RM in Monterey at $150-200,000.
1967 Ferrari 330 GTC
1967 Ferrari 330 GTC – The 330 GTC phenomenon again. S/n 10007 sold for $506,000 a year and a half ago at RM Amelia in 2013. At Bonhams Quail Lodge this August it’s estimated at $800-950,000, 37.5% compounded annually if it sells at the low estimate.

A Gullwing, GTB/4 or XKE isn’t a pool of mortgages on dwellings where people live and pay every month to keep a roof over their families’ heads. It isn’t a corporate debenture backed by earnings generated by utility to consumers (assuming they have money to acquire that utility.) It’s a dormant, inanimate thing that costs money to own and maintain. It achieves value only through its owner’s enthusiasm and participation in events, even events as mundane as a Saturday afternoon drive. There is no inherent value in a Dino, particularly a half-million dollar Dino.

The Classic market is, thankfully, the exception. The collectors of classic Packards, Bentleys, Stutzes, Lincolns and Cadillacs migrate from the cars they knew as kids into new experiences and friendships among Classic owners and events. They have gained perspective. They don’t follow fads and fashion, they’ve been inoculated for that through hard experience.

1936 Auburn 852 SC Speedster
1936 Auburn 852 SC Speedster – Sold for $246,000 as an aged, tired restoration at Christie’s Greenwich auction in 2005, sold by RM at Monterey in 2008 after a nut-and-bolt restoration for $533,500, estimated by RM at Monterey in 2014 at $550-650,000, a steady, safe, conservative classic value.
1913 Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost Roi des Belges
1913 Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost Roi des Belges – Sold by Bonhams in 2008 at the dispersal of the Richard C. Paine, Jr. collection for $832,000, this important 1913 Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost 40/50hp Roi des Belges Tourer is estimated at this year’s Bonhams Quail Lodge at only $750-900,000.
1936 Mercedes-Benz 540K Special Cabriolet
1936 Mercedes-Benz 540K Special Cabriolet – Pictured at RM Monterey in 2010 where it sold for $913,000, it had sold three years before at RM’s Phoenix auction for $1,028,500. It’s estimated at $1.1-1.3 million at RM Monterey 2014.

But the divergence between Classic values and more recent cars is a key indicator of frenzy, a transition from collecting to speculating.

Monterey is a celebration of automobiles, but the celebration has been overwhelmed by speculation. It isn’t the Pebble Beach Concours or The Quail or the Concours on the Avenue that gets headlines. It’s the auctions and the eye-popping prices the cars bring that are in the bold print.

Car collecting has lost track of its reason for being, the cars, and been supplanted by speculation.

It can’t continue, and Monterey may be the beginning of The End.

Notes on comparison photos: Historic sale prices include buyers’ commissions; current auction estimates do not. Rates of return are approximate. The cars shown are only a sample for which earlier auction photos can be found, but the disparity in historic and contemporary value [estimates] show the divergence in value expectations for high visibility, fashionable, cars from those expectations for cars not featured in the limelight.

[Source: Rick Carey; photos: Tim Scott / Fluid Images; RM Auctions; Rick Carey]