Daring to Dream
Hi Friends!
I have to admit, I am absolutely fascinated by RM Sotheby’s upcoming Dare to Dream Collection. For those who may not be familiar, it’s an incredibly unique Toronto, Canada single collection sale with both online and live components that kicks off later this week. It features a wide range of offerings from mid-century European sports cars to top tier Muscle and Pony cars to Late Model Supercars to a huge range of Motorcycles to Military and Police Vehicles to Campaigned Racecars as well as a jaw-dropping selection of Collectible Sneakers and Memorabilia. There’s a couple reasons, why I’m watching this particular auction so closely though:
DIVERSITY OF OFFERINGS
As we all know, collectors like to collect. Generally however, there’s usually somewhat of a cohesive theme throughout collections. People tend to be Porsche people or Muscle Car guys or they collect Late Model Exotics, ’50s Americana or whatever and that particular focus extends throughout their collections. Dare to Dream seems to be continuing a trend where people are specifically going out of their way just to collect the best examples of the most things possible. We saw a handful of these collections coming to light towards the middle and end of 2023, but this one seems to be the most over the top yet. This is a shift that we’re starting to see with some of our Dealer and Private Collection Clients as well. People’s tastes are much more broad than they were even a few years ago and from the top of this industry down, this is good news (especially for businesses), as it represents more opportunities for more people to do more things and we definitely think this is certainly worth taking note of.
THE STOCKX EFFECT
A couple of years ago I started noticing Bearbrick and KAWS statues showing up in the background with collector cars at events and I knew this day was coming. StockX is a online auction platform specializing in “Hypebeast” type collectibles like sneakers, fashion accessories, art toys, etc. and with about $550 million in annual sales and an overall valuation of just under $4 billion, I knew it was a matter of time before more traditional live auction houses started looking for their own share of this clearly viable marketplace. Sotheby’s has an established a sneaker division and Bonhams has previously run sales focused on this audience as well, but it’s clear this trend is accelerating.
Of course, Automobilia has always been a significant component of collectors stables, but the other question remains, what does this say about the future of more traditional items that accompany vehicle collections, like gas pumps, neon signs, etc? Of course, nearly every live auction begins with some form of a memorabilia sale, but it seems that the StockX era is at minimum almost here and depending on how these types of items perform with Dare to Dream, it should provide a pretty solid indicator of whether or not that time is now.
That’s it for this week…
Darin Roberge