Market Intelligence
The phenomenon of Online Auctions. Browsing through 2022
Online auctions for collector cars have exploded during the pandemic, with sites like Bring a Trailer leading the way, surpassing $1 billion in sales in 2022. Other platforms like PCARMARKET, Collecting Cars, The Market by Bonhams, and Car & Classic have also seen success, with records being broken for cars like a Lamborghini Murcielago and a Datsun 240Z. However, not all high-priced cars have sold, leaving uncertainty for the future of online auctions and their impact on traditional auctions. Despite this, the market for online auctions continues to grow, with sites offering interesting and diverse cars for every budget.
Any events that intersect with important moments in history always bring change: before the Pandemic, online auctions could be divided into two categories: on the one hand general-purpose sites such as eBay where buyers could find anything they wanted, including cars. On the other, sites dedicated to small communities of enthusiasts that also facilitated trades between members.
Then there was the pandemic. Those small communities became huge, and sites specializing in collector car auctions sprang up like mushrooms after the rain.
The first one that comes to mind is Bring a Trailer, an auction house that not only managed to produce frankly staggering results but, paradoxically, despite the almost complete lack of lockdowns across the world, is continuing to produce record after record: in 2021, it “took home” over $800 million in sales, but in September 2022, it stunned everyone by announcing it had exceeded one billion dollars in sales since the beginning of the year. And that’s all it took to wipe out the competition. Smart move by Hearst, who bought the platform in 2020!
