The Amelia Island Concours d’ Elegance this year was simply put, a truly joyous affair if you are a car junkie. Little else needs to be said, though of course I’m going to. The big event on Sunday did not disappoint our team, our clients, our friends or colleagues from the interactions we had.
Overall, the cars on display at the concours event on Sunday were just fantastic and the crowds were quite robust with an air of good feeling despite global trepidation over COVID-19 and stock market undulations…in fact we noticed everyone was in a particularly jovial mood if for no other reason than being presented the opportunity to fist bump, elbow clap and toe tap without fear of being perceived as slightly too hip. Those in charge of the Amelia Island Concours d’ Elegance 2020 get all the kudos possible from this outfit, it continues to reaffirm why it’s one of the most celebrated collector car events in the world year in and year out.
With regards to the auction results, we will not be doing any numbers based breakdowns or comparisons, we’ll let the dedicated journalists parse all that for you in their coming published works. However, there are some general sentiments to quickly share that while anecdotal, can cut to the chase regarding the happenings at the Amelia Island auction tents and general collector car market sentiment as it stands today.
Scott Grundfor Company attended all three days of auctioning, from Bonhams on Thursday to Gooding on Friday Morning, over to RM Friday Evening and pancakes prior to RM Saturday, we saw it all and got a great feeling about the mood afoot. All three auction houses seemed very happy to be coming out of the general malaise of very lackluster enthusiasm that surrounding both Scottsdale 2020 and Monterey 2019. The long and the short of it is that there were outstanding sell through rates with gross dollar amounts essentially on par with last years numbers, only slightly below 2019 which was rather unexpected.
In talking with several auction house executives, what seems quite clear at this interesting moment in the collector car market is that while many models are down 10 to 20% (or more) from 2018 numbers, buyers and sellers are starting to see eye to eye with the large volume of no reserve lots and realistic estimates encouraging bidding on what might be otherwise un-engaging lots. This is a good thing for market health and good for both buyers and sellers. In other words, there weren’t a lot of auction entries that weren’t based in reality, even if that means in general that the very best cars simply aren’t making an appearance at auction at present. The collector car market is a complex environment and sentiment is quite important…we left with a sense that the mood was very good, stable and headed back in a positive direction after a rocky 9 months or so going back to the Pebble Beach auctions of 2019.
Courtesy of: Scott Grundfor Co.
