December always looks quieter than it really is. Listings slow down, calendars fill up with travel and holidays, and the market takes a breather. On paper, total listings and sold counts landed almost exactly where they were in December 2024. That holds true across both live and online auctions, which makes it easy to assume nothing much happened…
Look one layer deeper and the story gets more colorful. Dollar Volume and Average Price both moved up, which shows that the cars that did sell were meaningful ones. Big money still showed up, led by the RM Sotheby’s Abu Dhabi sale, which accounted for eight of the top ten sales in December. Steady transactions, smart sellers, and buyers who knew exactly what they wanted. That is December doing what December does best.
Top 10 Sales in December 2025
When you zoom in on the Top 10 Sales, the shape of the market gets even clearer. Eight of the ten came from RM Sotheby’s, which is no surprise at this point, they have owned the very top of the leaderboard all year. What is worth noting are the other two. Both were online sales from Bring a Trailer, and both cleared the $3M mark. That is not a consolation prize. It is a reminder that while the ultra-high end may cluster around marquee live auctions, online platforms (especially BaT) are still very much in the game when it comes to serious, high-dollar cars.
Top 10 Flips & Flops in December 2025
Each month, we track “Flips” and “Flops,” which we define as cars with documented previous sale records. This enables us to calculate the net gain or loss and the time elapsed since the last sale. While some purists argue that a genuine Flip/Flop occurs only within a 12-month timeframe from the previous sale, we believe this list offers entertainment and valuable insights that a narrower window would overlook. Admittedly, it’s plausible that cars have changed hands in private transactions between these public listings; nonetheless, this data provides valuable insights into which cars have realized significant gains or losses compared to their previous sales. Enjoy this data at your own discretion.
Flips
Flops
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Results are included from the following auctions in December 2025:
Online Auctions:
* 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.
**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.
Read more in our Glossary of Terms