Despite the concerns of another languid year of tepid sales at the 2012 Barrett-Jackson Scottsdale Collector Car Auction, this year’s event has indicated that things are looking up both in the way collectors spent and in how fans attended.
Racking up some $92 million in gross sales, the auction event beat last year’s sales by 32%. Foot traffic was up this year too with some 270,000 people in attendance over the week from January 15th through the 22nd. That’s an increase of 16% over last year and of course the mild weather this year helped too.
Mustangs, Ford muscle and Mercury muscle cars kept our focus this year as always. The top billing in our category goes to a 2013 Shelby GT-500 prototype (Lot 3043) that sold for charity at $300,000 to known Ford collector Ron Pratte.
We of course remain surprised at the continued appreciation bidders have for the 1967-1968 Eleanor clone Mustangs. Whether they are extremely well done like the 1967 Fastback (Lot 1039) that only fetched $82,500 or horridly built without a thread of accuracy to the theme like the 1968 Fastback (Lot 719) that got a crack smoking $242,000, these cars defy all sense of reality. Even a custom Mustang called “Bad Ass” (Lot 1299- pictured top) loosely based on the Eleanor car but nowhere close to it sold for $275,000.
The notion that a fake clone of an imaginary Shelby GT-500 from the remake of “Gone In Sixty Seconds”, that never really existed anywhere but in a B-movie with a B-actor at the wheel, can routinely get more cash than top 10 concours examples of the real thing is downright loopy. And even in these bad times people keep building their own hackneyed visions of this fake car and sell them one after another no matter now badly done they are.
Beyond Fords and Mustangs, the top sale of the event was a 1948 Tucker Torpedo (Lot #5008) from the Ron Pratte Collection which was one of only 51 ever made. That car sold for $2.915 million, a world record for the sale of a Tucker.
Of the notable statistics that Barrett-Jackson points out from this year’s event is that 50% of top bidders this year were new to the auction event. This lends one to believe a new crop of well heeled buyers and collectors is growing out there.
This year nearly 50% of the consigners for the cars we saw sold this year were also new to the event. This explains in some ways the wider variety of cars we saw this year coming from private owners, collection and new builders.
Also noted is a rise in the number of pick-up trucks that made it to the block. Barrett-Jackson says that more than 150 trucks were entered in this year’s auction, making up some 10% of total sales. And while we didn’t cover them here at TMN this year, we saw many that were well restored and presented. We will likely include them in next year’s Scottsdale coverage.
In conclusion, this year’s event was never dull. The weather was good unlike the headlines of year’s past have shown. With a wider variety of cars than ever before from new sellers and bought by new bidders alike the event had a freshness this year that we hope continues into the Palm Beach, Las Vegas, and Orange County events.
2012 Barrett-Jackson Scottsdale Event Coverage Index
