Gooding Auction at Amelia Island 2025: Cliff Goodall Plays Detective

I decided to play private investigator to unravel the mystery of this year’s Gooding auction at Amelia Island. What do the slightly declining numbers hide? A market downturn or something to uncover? Stepping into the shoes of Nero Wolfe or, perhaps more fittingly, my stunt double Hercule Poirot, I tried to analyze the "crime": despite the total value offered increasing from $64,155,000 to $74,635,000, the final total awarded failed to grow and instead saw a slight decline from $66,087,670 to $64,549,460. It was a painstaking task to analyze the guilt or alibi of 143 suspects, as many as the cars in the auction — an increase of 21 units compared to 122 in 2024 — but the average price registered a notable decrease: from $641,510 to $504,292, with no mitigating circumstances, as the percentage of no-reserve cars rose from 57% to 61.53%.