The middle of the collector-car market—the $100 k – $500 k tier—quietly firmed in the first half of 2025. Buyers absorbed more cars than a year ago even though consignors trimmed catalogues, pushing the tier’s liquidity to its best level since 2021 and setting a fresh dollar-volume record without relying on price inflation.
Key Stats – $100-500K Tier (H1 2025 vs H1 2024)
Headline numbers tell the story: dollar volume edged up to $752 M (+1.7% YoY) on 4,101 sales (+3%) drawn from 5,215 listings (-1.7%), lifting the sell-through rate from 75 % to 79 % while the average transaction price slipped a negligible 1.3% to $183 k.
Online platforms remained the workhorse, capturing 45% of all dollars ($339 M) and improving sell-through rate to 70%, even after trimming listings 4%.
Among live venues, Kissimmee supplied nearly the entire cash increase—dollar volume +35% on a 20% bigger docket and a nine-point jump in sell-through to 79%—offsetting a modest 1% dip at “Other Live” sales and a sharper 11% pull-back at Scottsdale. Amelia & Miami held steady with a perfect 100% clearance, demonstrating that tight, well-curated catalogues can still sell every car at this price point.
Strength is coming from volume, not rising prices: consignors who right-size reserves are moving cars quickly—especially online and at high-energy shows like Kissimmee—while over-stuffed catalogues face diminishing returns. Expect auction houses to keep dockets lean and digital operators to siphon off still more share as the market heads into the Monterey season, sustaining a “high-throughput, flat-pricing” equilibrium for the rest of the year.
Top Markets
Using our CLASSIC.COM Market Benchmark*, we’ve analyzed over 5,000 individual markets** to pinpoint the top Growing and Slowing Markets so far in 2025 in the across five distinct value tiers: Over 1M, Between $500K-1M, Between $100K-500K, Between $50K-100K and under $50K. To qualify for this list, a market must have more than one sold listing between January-June 2025.
Note: CMB is an indicator of how recent market activity has impacted typical market values. It does not guarantee individual vehicle appreciation.
Out of the 428 markets analyzed for this tier, roughly 45 % of them (191 names) posted positive six-month evolution of their CMB, lifting the middle of the collector-car market even as price inflation remained tame. Two clusters account for most of the green ink: 1980s performance icons, which jumped an average 10% in the last six months, and driver-focused 1960s-to-1970s sports or rally cars, up a more modest 4%. By contrast, the heaviest losses appeared in pre-war metal and 1950s blue-chip classics, where values slipped as much as 21%.
The data confirms that liquidity caps appreciation. Markets registering three or more H1 sales actually fell 0.4 % on average, whereas low-float names (<3 trades) rose 3.2 %. Looking through an era lens, sales-weighted six-month gains run +3.0 % for the 1980s, +1.1 % for the 1960s, and under +1 % for the 1990s and 2000s. Everything older than the 1970s is flat or negative. Unsurprisingly, the tier-wide Classic.com Market Benchmark (CMB) is fractionally lower (-1.1 %) than it was in Q1 2024; only the ’80s (+4.2 %) and the ’90s/2000s (about +1 %) sit above their 2024 start.
Collectors chasing appreciation should look to low-production, late-analog sports cars (1980-2005) and select homologation specials, where demand is rising as those models clear the 25-year import and classic-insurance thresholds. Conversely, sellers of high-maintenance or track-biased machinery need to price realistically—or wait for supply to tighten—lest they become part of the laggard list. Above all, beware the volatility: micro-markets that trade only a car or two a year can jump or drop double digits the very next time the hammer falls.
Top 10 Growing Markets
Top 10 Slowing Markets
*The CLASSIC.COM Market Benchmark (CMB) is a benchmark value for vehicles in a given Market based on data accumulated by CLASSIC.COM and calculated by a proprietary algorithm that takes into account volume and recency of each data point. CMB can be used to assess the performance of a market over a given time period. However, it does not represent the value of a specific vehicle.
** A Market on CLASSIC.COM is a grouping of comparable vehicles that have, at a minimum, the same Make, Model, and Model Generation. When relevant for purposes of valuation, a Market may be further segmented by Model Variant, Trim, Transmission Type, Body Style, and other factors.