Latest Market commentary from CCFS auction analyst Richard Hudson-Evans
Auctions Commentary from CCFS Market Analyst Richard Hudson-Evans
As the ‘Classic Car Auction Yearbook’ in their latest and annually essential 2013-2014 edition reports, the current market for absolutely non-essential collector vehicle commodities has become more “Ferrari-centric” than ever before with 48 of the top 100 sales logged being Prancing Horses.
Between 1 September 2013 and 31 August 2014, Adolfo Orsi Junior, President of Historica Selecta, the Modena-based publisher of the Yearbook, reckons Ferrari sales of over $338m (£203m) accounted for 33.36% of the total turnover with the new all-time record for a classic car at auction set by the 1962 250 GTO in the photo sold for $38m (£23m) by Bonhams during the Californian Gold Rush in August.
The stellar performance of the Violati GTO, points out Orsi, had actually been a long time coming, because the last example of what has always been considered the most gilt-edged of all vehicular share certificates sold at a publically witnessed auction back in 1990, at what was the end of a long period of price increases, changing hands for $10.76m (£6.45m). Two more GTOs went under the hammer in 1991 and 2000, but both failed their very public test and were unsold.
The latest Yearbook stats, a definitive check on how high value kit has fared on the international auction circuit, indicate that new heights were scaled during the preceding season of collector car auctions with the highest sales rate in the last 20 years of 76% and, at 245 fine cars sold, nearly twice the number of blue chip motors sold above the perceived to be magic million dollars marker compared to the previous year. Even more remarkably, and for the first time in 20 years of scrutiny by Orsi and co-author Raffaele Gazzi, overall sales of high end auction car lots exceeded $1 billion!
The percentage of Ferraris sold works out at 79%, the highest figure yet recorded by the Yearbook, which means that only one out of five Ferraris parked on saleroom carpets didn’t attract a buyer. But when you look more closely at some of the results achieved by some of the Ferraris from the Fifties and Sixties, such as the second series of the 250 GT Cabriolet and the 250 Lusso, the percentage of sales was 100%.
In an attempt to cash-in on the classic Ferrari boom before the money in the juke box ran out and the music stopped, more Ferraris than ever before were dusted down and came to market, many selling for prices that increased by up to 70% when compared to only a few months earlier. This was a confident demonstration, suggests Orsi, of a classic bull market at play, with lower supply and greater demand. The bulls were clearly very well fed though.
The average value of each Ferrari sold also makes interesting reading. Clearly influenced by the value of the record sales of the Bonhams GTO and the 275GTB/C Speciale sold by RM in Monterey, the average zoomed to a UK provincial house price beating $1,165,000 (£699,000), an increase of 48%, when compared to the average value of the 2012-2013 season figures.
Inevitably, the Yearbook’s Top 100 is also now dominated by Ferraris, which account for 48 of the cars on the list, the highest number of Ferraris ever in the high prices group. The post-WW2 manufacture of Ferraris has certainly influenced the construction age of the cars in the Top 100, too, and so we find listed no less than 53 cars of the Classic Period (built between 1946 and 1964) and 23 from the Post Classic Period (1965 to 1974). Even among the pure gold of the Top 10, nine are Ferraris, while in tenth place is the former Scuderia Ferrari Alfa Romeo!
The Historic Automobile Group International Top 50 Index however has just declined by 0.38% in November, indicating a slight and most probably no more than a seasonal softening in the prices realised for many mainstream classics. Although the HAGI F Index, which charts Ferrari activity, has recorded another points gain during this last month’s trading with a 1.34% increase in their prices and 18.1% growth for the Ferrari market during the year to date.
Next year is just that, another year and, for insular islanders, a General Election year, when the outcome and therefore nothing is certain - which is why I am just about to opt for the certainty of opening the next bottle of Old Speckled Hen. Cheers!