Market Intelligence
Feverish deals
The recent Artcurial auction of the André Trigano collection saw all 167 cars offered sold, with 148 cars (over 88%) fetching prices above their estimated value. The car sales generated a remarkable €3,958,152, 177.8% of the expected total. When auction houses are given a single, large collection of cars to sell and all are offered without reserve prices, they record great revenues. The trick is to offer the cars with estimates well below their real value, only to get the prices up to normal levels during the event. At events of this kind, sellers tend to “place their bets” on certain star cars, around a dozen or so important ones, which they expect will generate the bulk of their turnover.
Have you ever seen those videos on the internet where mints are dropped in a bottle of cola causing it to erupt? This image perhaps best illustrates what happened to the André Trigano collection at the recent Artcurial auction.
All 167 cars offered were sold. “That’s not surprising!” you might well retort “all but one of them were offered without reserve!”, but the fact is that 148 (over 88%) fetched amounts in excess of their upper estimated value, while only two failed to reach their lower one.
The result was not just impressive in value terms: after pre-sale minimum estimates amounting to a total of €2,226,680, the car sales alone generated a remarkable €3,958,152 — 177.8% of the expected total!
