RM Sotheby’s at Monterey: The incredible record-breaking auction

It was the auction of records. There’s no other way to describe RM’s sale at Monterey 2025: fewer cars, fewer no-reserve offerings, lower total estimates, and fewer days. Yet the formula worked brilliantly: in 2024 the Anglo-Canadian house had the opportunity to offer a collection of 50 no-reserve cars and even organized an extra day just for them. Without that in 2025, the auction went from three to two days, with cars dropping from 201 to 152 (exactly 49 fewer), and the overall estimated value sliding from $212,295,000 to $160,115,000. Despite the absence of around fifty no-reserve cars, the sell-through rate held steady at 84% in both years (84.08% and 84.21% respectively), and at the end of the two days, the total hammered amount had actually risen — from $154,004,680 last year to $163,438,860. These numbers already say a lot about the success, but not everything: in fact, it was the auction of records because record after record quite literally poured in. I started counting them and then at a certain point said to myself: “There are too many — how can I possibly tell them all unless I leave out some detail?” You’ll understand.
At the very top, it’s only right to place the 2025 Ferrari Daytona SP3 Tailor Made. Let’s do a bit of math: the new car had a base price of $2.5–3 million, plus about another million as a Tailor Made. So the pre-auction estimate of “over $3.5 million” was accurate. It also made sense to add another million since it was the very last example (the 500th out of the 499 announced, a true one-off) and the proceeds were destined for charity. My estimate was therefore around $5 million. I tried to understand why it sold for the astronomical figure of $26,000,000. Was it a gamble? Let’s see: about half of the amount is tax-deductible (so effectively Herbert Wertheim will pay $13,000,000), and it is a unique piece. As a comparison, I looked at the Ferrari Enzo that was donated to Pope John Paul II to be auctioned for the victims of the Fukushima disaster: it sold for triple the price of a normal one. Here we’re a little higher, but not by much. It’s only a reference, of course: Ferrari’s generous gesture and the munificence of the buyer are certainly a fine signal for the whole collector world.