Junkyard Dogs
Hi Friends!
I’ll admit, over the course of my career I’ve had kind of a complicated relationship with barn finds. At first, I completely didn’t get it. I looked at them as junky gimmicks and didn’t understand the appeal.
Then I discovered barn find motorcycles and my opinion completely changed. A really good barn find is kind of like reading a book. It’s the story of not only that individual piece itself, but the people that surrounded it and the environment that it was placed in. It’s also a relationship between nature and a man-made machine and that can produce some fascinating things as well. Although, I certainly appreciate the artistry involved with a high-level restoration, ultimately at the end of the day what you’re doing when you restore rather than preserve something is erasing the words that are being told and the picture being painted on that canvas.
After a few years in the auction business and watching people and their spending habits, I picked up another piece of the puzzle and this opinion started to evolve even further. I started to more fully understand the exclusivity components of barn finds. For somebody that has everything and can get anything they want relatively easily, a barn find represents that next level of collectability. It’s something that you can’t recreate and the guy up the street just can’t go out and buy the same version somewhere else. There’s only one story, one path traveled and one example of each. The more valuable and exclusive the car, the rarer and more desirable that barn find is.
This is pretty much what we witnessed yesterday with RM Sotheby’s Rudi Klein Junkyard Collection. To say that the results were astonishing would be an understatement. Here were your top five sales….
- 1956 Mercedes-Benz 300 SL ‘Alloy’ Gullwing – $9,355,000
- 1935 Mercedes-Benz 500 K ‘Caracciola’ Special Coupe – $4,130,000
- 1939 Horch 855 Special Roadster – $3,305,000
- 1964 Iso Grifo A3/L Spider Prototype – $1,875,000
- 1968 Lamborghini Miura P400 – $1,325,000
Needless to say, most of yesterday afternoon and evening was dedicated to back and forth conversations with clients, collectors and complete bewilderment from the from the general public in my DMs on Instagram.
How did this happen? How did a broken down and neglected Mercedes-Benz in its incorrect colors, pull $2 million more than a fully restored and correct car did in Arizona just a couple years ago?
I think there’s a couple of reasons why this sale did what it did and it basically breaks down to the story and the way that it was told.
Make no mistake, these were special cars. The prototype Iso Grifo was astonishing, as were most of the more complete Porsche examples offered and the opportunity to acquire an unrestored Lamborghini Miura at this point in history is definitely pretty remarkable. Without a doubt though, the 300 SL Gullwing is what really blew everyone away.
First of all, the obvious stuff: This example was just one of 29 alloy body cars produced and despite its current appearance, it was the only one delivered in factory Swartz Black. It was also originally ordered this way by famed racing driver and Ferrari importer Luigi Chinetti. The car stayed in his custody until 1976 when it was purchased by Klein at the Daytona 500. I think it’s safe to say that pretty much no normal people bought alloy Gullwings, but even if, this is still an interesting story. This car was also loaded top to bottom with the most desirable options ever produced on this line of cars too. It checked all the boxes. Add in its history with Klein (and the way it lived with him) and it’s a bonafide one of one and there will never be another one like it.
To see cars of this level all in one place, in a manner in which they were presented, was truly rare and exceptional as well. People love buried treasure and if you look back at the history of automotive media, the story gets told over and over again. Guys like Wayne Carini on Chasing Classic Cars or Tom Cotter the Barn Find Hunter have made careers out of doing this. This said, RM Sotheby’s really took this to the next level and told this story brilliantly. The branding was fantastic, the visuals beautiful and the way that RM presented this story to the marketplace made this sale almost mythical in nature. They also spent the money and put this everywhere. Their marketing team checked all their boxes and did this right for sure.
Last week, I got a comment from somebody asking me to talk about the differences between a regional auction house in the Midwest (who shall remain nameless), and sales like this one and why the results tend to be wildly different. Although, I’ll get more into that next week, what it really boils down to is spending money to attract things that are easier to go out in the market with. It’s about doing your marketing right and this was a perfect example and RM really showed that there’s levels here. Something definitely worth thinking about as a consigner (or as a company looking to produce top level results on basically anything).
Anyway, it took kind of a long time for me to come around to things like this, but I can definitely say that I’m fully here. I watched yesterday on the edge of my seat and I think that this sale overall was good for the marketplace. When it was over however, I was a little bit sorrowful. It’s definitely sad to know that this little slice of automotive history is now being parted out and will never exist again. It can be also said that we may not have that many more of these floating around out there either. Although, I do suspect that there are more of these out there than people think, and later model cars may preserve a little better than some people are guessing, there will come a time when we do have to say goodbye to collections like this, as there won’t be any more left. Proof positive, we need to enjoy what we have while we can, because the market will always call. Even louder than mother nature, that will ultimately end things like this, far before the rust and rain can.
That’s it for this week…
Darin Roberge