The middle of the collector-car market, the $100K to $500K tier, has been busy, but not overheated. This tier just reached its strongest liquidity since 2021 and set a new dollar-volume record, without leaning on price inflation to do it. More cars sold, more money changed hands, and it all happened because buyers and sellers met at realistic numbers. That’s healthy growth, the kind you want to see.
Nearly half of the $100K to $500K markets are on the upswing, and the strength is coming from two familiar places. First, the ’60s and early ’70s halo muscle and GT cars, led by icons like the Corvette L88 C3. Second, there’s a clear appetite for rare, usable modern performance cars. Think 997.2 manual Targa 4S, early 992 Turbos, the Ford Shelby 1000, or the Ferrari 458 Speciale. Just a handful of sales were enough to push those models upward.
The soft spots in the market tend to share a few common issues: high maintenance costs, limited use cases, or fading buzz. Big, complex rigs like the Mercedes 600 Pullman and G63 AMG 4×4² lost ground. So did the Corvette E-Ray once the early hype wore off. And some older prestige cars without a strong story – like the Bentley Continental Convertible or Porsche 356 C Carrera 2 – continued to drift.
Looking at the bigger picture, cars from the ’90s, ’60s, and 2000s are generally gaining ground, while the newest stuff and ’50s-era metal are trending soft. The benchmark for this tier is more or less flat overall, but the swings can be dramatic. Most of these markets only see a few sales, so one strong or weak result can move the needle fast.
Bottom line: distinctive, drivable cars with the right mix of rarity and usability are still winning. Overbuilt, overcomplicated, or overhyped cars? Not so much.
Using our CLASSIC.COM Market Benchmark (CMB)*, we’ve analyzed over 5,000 individual markets** to pinpoint the top Growing and Slowing Markets so far in 2025. 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.
Top 10 Growing Markets
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Top 10 Slowing Markets
Auction Stats
The headline numbers back it up: total dollar volume crept up to $752M, with 4,101 cars sold – about 3% more than this time last year. And that was from a slightly leaner pool of listings, which helped push the sell-through rate from 75% to 79%. Prices stayed steady, too – the average transaction ticked down just 1.3% to $183K, basically a rounding error in this tier.
Online platforms kept doing the heavy lifting, accounting for 45% of all dollars spent and improving their sell-through rate to 70%, even after listing fewer cars. Buyers are clearly comfortable transacting digitally – especially when reserves are realistic and the process is easy.
On the live auction side, Kissimmee carried most of the gains. They expanded the docket by 20%, bumped sell-through to 79%, and saw dollar volume jump 35% year-over-year. That growth helped offset a small dip at other regional auctions and a more noticeable pullback at Scottsdale. Meanwhile, Amelia and Miami kept things tight but efficient – selling every car they offered, proof that a well-curated catalog can still go the distance in this price range.
What’s driving the market right now isn’t rising prices – it’s volume. Sellers who set smart, realistic reserves are getting deals done, especially online and at high-energy events like Kissimmee. But when catalogs get bloated, results start to slip.
Heading into Monterey, expect auction houses to keep things tight and digital platforms to keep gaining ground. For now, the market seems settled into a steady rhythm: lots of cars moving, prices holding flat, and no big shifts on the horizon.
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*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.
