Auction Stats At first glance, September’s top-line results suggest an overall market decline. But a closer look shows steady growth in online sales, paired with a seasonal dip in live auction activity.
When we compare September 2023 to September 2024, key events like Barrett-Jackson New Orleans, Worldwide Auburn, and Gooding & Company's London Auction were absent from the September 2024 calendar but contributed significantly in 2023. In 2024, the latter two took place in August, while Barrett-Jackson skipped their New Orleans event entirely. This caused a significant impact on core metrics this month: Dollar Volume dropped by 22%, Total Listings by 9%, and Sold Listings by 10%.
The drop in live auctions also influenced non-volume metrics like Average Price and Sell-Through Rate, as live events generally feature higher-value cars and tend to drive stronger sell-through rates. By analyzing these metrics in detail below, the overall narrative starts to take shape:
September Breakdown
The 22.4% decline in Dollar Volume ($66M) was driven by a 53% drop in live auction sales ($73M). In contrast, online auctions showed stability year-over-year with a modest 4% increase ($7.6M).
While total Sold Listings decreased 10% overall, online auctions saw a 14% growth year-over-year, actually surpassing the growth seen the year prior. Again, it was the absence of significant live auctions that contributed to the overall sense of decline.
Sell-Through Rate (STR) has remained notably stable year-over-year, showing only a modest 1% decline over September 2023, and consistently hovering between 62-68% throughout 2024 – with the exception of January's remarkable spike to 75% due to No-Reserve auctions at Scottsdale. Overall, this consistency signals a healthy, balanced market.
However, while the steady STR and rising number of Sold Listings point to strong market activity and alignment between buyer and seller expectations, the dip in Average Price reveals that many of these deals are happening at lower price points.
Many blue-chip cars can still command impressive prices, but many top-tier sellers are holding onto their investments (as seen in Monterey), leaving mid-tier vehicles to drive most of the market activity—contributing to a downward trend in Average Price. While many mid-tier cars are maintaining stable prices, they can't match the consistent high-value sales we saw during the pandemic years. This represents a reset in expectations for sellers who bought during that period, and for buyers now cautious of finding themselves in a similar market situation.
Year-to-Date
Comparing month-over-month market activity offers valuable insight into the current dynamics. As mentioned earlier, this month saw a notable drop in activity, largely due to changes in the live event schedule. Despite this, the underlying seasonal trends remain steady: September consistently sees a lower dollar volume compared to August, but a higher number of Sold Listings.
A similar trend is evident in online auctions, where steady growth continues when compared to the same period in previous years, and the month-over-month pattern remains consistent.
We also continue to see the same trends we've been reporting on since mid-2022: while the overall market is showing stability (and, yes, even a slight slowdown), market activity is high at online auctions as they continue to show growth in both Sold Listings and Dollar Volume, often at the expense of live auctions. However, live auctions are still the venue of choice for high-value sales, and where we see the highest Sell-through Rates.
Notable Sales
Top 10 Sales in September 2024
Typically, live auctions dominate the Top Sales each month, with only a rare 1 or 2 online transactions making it into this list. However, in September, half of the Top 10 sales came from Bring a Trailer, including the month’s only 7-figure sale. As noted earlier, we consider this an anomaly based on the live auction schedule and expect live auctions to be back dominating the Top 10 chart next month.
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Top 10 Flips & Flops in September 2024
Each month, we track "Flips" and "Flops," which we define as cars with documented previous sales. 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 September 2024
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" chart showcases listings that broke records within their respective market segments and across all value tiers.
It's notable that that 8 of this month's 10 Market Busters are from 1995 or later. Collectors take note!
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This Report includes data from the following auctions:
Online Auctions:
- ACC Auctions
- AutoHunter
- Bidders Highway
- Bonhams | Cars Online
- Bring a Trailer
- Cars & Bids
- Catawiki Classic Cars
- Clasiq Auctions
- Collecting Cars
- Collector Car Canada
- Fast Car Bids
- Formula Auctions
- Guys with Rides
- Hagerty Marketplace Auctions
- H&H Auctioneers
- Hemmings Auctions
- ISSIMI
- Kickdown
- PCARMARKET
- SBX Cars
- The MB Market
* 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
