One for the Record Books
In our Monterey Preview post, we asked whether the auctions in Monterey could finally beat the record dollar volume of $469M set in 2022. It turns out, the answer is a resounding YES.
Over the course of 3 days on a tiny peninsula in California, 850 cars sold across 5 auctions for $751M, with an average price of $892,317. Every metric that we measure auctions by turned out to be a record except one: sell-through came in at 75.6%, a hair under 2022’s 76.2%, so 2022 keeps that single crown.
Here’s how the numbers shifted over the past 5 years:
Two Auctions, Two-Thirds of the Money
Monterey’s money landed very unevenly. RM Sotheby’s Monterey sold 20% of the cars and generated 50% of the money. Together with Gooding Christie’s Pebble Beach, those two auctions accounted for 71% of the total dollar volume – beating 2022’s entire record between them. Gooding also posted the week’s two best individual numbers: a 93.4% sell-through and the $42,905,000 top sale of a very unique Shelby Daytona.
Mecum Monterey sold more cars than anyone else: they brought 521 lots (46% of the entire Monterey catalogue), and sold 324 of them. However, these cars were a lower average price than the other sales – with a total dollar volume of $111.6M, about 15% of the week’s money.
Rounding out the list, Broad Arrow’s Quail Auction brought $93.5M on 154 cars at 81.5% sell-through, and Bonhams’ Laguna Seca debut took $11.9M from the week’s smallest catalogue of 56 lots.
Top Sales at Monterey 2026
Monterey Car Week never disappoints when it comes to Top Sales, and this year was no exception. RM Sotheby’s dominated with 6 of the Top 10 lots, headlined by a jaw-dropping $40M charity sale of a 2026 Ferrari Luce that had the whole weekend talking. But the top sale of the week went to a 1964 Daytona race car once owned by Carroll Shelby himself.
114 Market Records set in 1 Weekend
Of the hundreds of 568 Markets that traded in Monterey, 114 of them hit a new all-time high, led by icons like the McLaren F1, Ferrari F50, and 288 GTO. Many broke records just recently set earlier this year.
And while the total consignment count at Monterey is getting younger, the pre-war segment is still setting records – topping the Record list was a 1935 Deusenberg that blasted its Market Record by almost 600%.
Really New Cars & Really Old Cars Run the Show
Out of the total $751.3M spent across auction week, cars from the 1960s sold 182 units to bring in $147.7 million. Cars from the 2020s hit that exact same number — $147.7 million — with only 53 cars. That’s a third of the sales for the same payday – showing the strength of the more modern cars in the garages of today’s collectors. Of course, the $40M charity sale of the 2026 Luce helped this stat a lot!
Pre-war, meanwhile, quietly had an excellent week: 143 cars sold for $102.6 million at an 84% sell-through, the highest of any decade. The generational shift is real, but this week pre-war material was the most reliably saleable thing on the lawn. The soft spot was the modern middle: 2010s cars sold at just 63%.
The Flippers Got Paid
We saw 192 cars come back up for sale in Monterey after already selling once before. Of those, 143 found a new buyer. Most of the owners came out ahead: 87 sold for more than last time, while 54 sold for less. Add it all up, and these cars originally sold for $47.4 million combined. This time around, they brought in $66 million — a 39% jump.
Monterey Just Set the Bar Sky-High — Can It Stay There?
Monterey didn’t just have a strong week — it set records everywhere you look. 141 cars sold for over a million dollars, and 21 of those topped five million. And it wasn’t just a couple of huge sales carrying the whole show: even if you remove the top three cars (which brought in $117.6 million on their own), the week still totaled $633.8 million — still a record, and by a wide margin.
But look closer, and the market is splitting in two. Rare, modern hypercars are hot, with $147.7 million from just 53 cars, and pre-war classics are having their best run in a decade. Meanwhile, everyday classics from the middle decades are cooling off — 1970s cars only pulled in $22.8 million all week, and 2010s cars struggled to sell at all. So the big question now is whether $751 million is the new normal or just one incredible weekend. We’ll get a real answer in January, when Kissimmee and Scottsdale — with even more cars on offer than Monterey — show us if this appetite sticks around.
In the meantime, expect September to return to “normal” where Live auctions focus on quality over quantity, and Online auctions continuing to grow the market — with a few jaw-dropping surprises along the way, no doubt. Follow it all on CLASSIC.COM.
