There’s plenty of chatter out there about a “cooling” market, but the numbers tell a different story. What we’re seeing is a market that’s found its balance. Prices have eased from the fever pitch of a few years ago, but cars are selling, deals are happening, and buyers and sellers are meeting each other on fair terms. It’s less frenzy and more focus, which is a healthy place for the market to be.
In October, we saw $461.3 million in total auction sales across 7,597 sold listings. Nearly two-thirds of those sales happened through keyboards, not paddles. The mix shows a market that’s active and increasingly comfortable doing big business from the comfort of a laptop screen – but the very highest end of the market still transacts in person vs online.
Top 10 Sales in October 2025
October’s Top 10 sales were a Ferrari fan’s dream. Seven of the ten came from Maranello’s finest, joined by two Bugattis and one Pagani for good measure. Every single one changed hands at a live auction – RM Sotheby’s swept the leaderboard with nine of the ten sales, while Bonhams claimed 5th highest sale. The month’s biggest check was written for $6.7 million, proving that even as the broader market cools, the top tier still knows how to make a headline.
Top Online Sales in October 2025
Meanwhile, on the online side of the market, Bring a Trailer swept all three of the month’s top online sales – led by a $2.8M result that would’ve topped most live auction leaderboards in another month. The other two weren’t far behind, showing that while the glitz of the auction room still draws the biggest checks, the online world continues to hold its own in connecting serious buyers with serious cars.
Top 10 Flips & Flops in October 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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Market Busters in October 2025
While most statistics and reviews tend to concentrate on the upper echelon of the market, noteworthy examples are consistently emerging across all segments of the industry. Our “Market Busters” list showcases listings that broke records within their respective market segments and across all value tiers.
Results are included from the following auctions in October 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
