Hi Friends!
The results of the 2025 Arizona Car Week auctions are in and they are well……. perplexing. From the outside everything looks pretty straightforward. RM Sotheby’s was up, so was MAG (probably), Barrett-Jackson was down and Bonham’s was way down. Not so fast however. There was a lot of non-block related things that happened, that make navigating these results more prickly than a Saguaro in a sand storm.
As we’ve been discussing in this newsletter for weeks now, there was a lot of on the ground changes to Arizona Car Week this year. This however wasn’t just limited to the shows, drives and other events. Every auction house was affected in a similar manner and this only further serves to complicate what actually happened and Arizona’s traditional purpose as the initial analysis point for the market for the year may have been slightly compromised as a result. Sure, there are consistencies and there are places that we can assume are likely jumping off points that we can use to strategize at least the initial marketplace and where it’s going in 2025, but the broader headlines may not be as simple and straightforward as they seem and the story is more surrounding the auction houses themselves and how the cars changed hands versus just the cars that changed hands.
Here’s what happened at the Arizona auctions in 2025…..
RM Sotheby’s
$31.6M (+$8.7M)
90 Offered
94% Sold
From where I sit, with greatly improved overall sales totals and a significantly higher sell-through rate, RM Sotheby’s was the winner of Arizona Car Week 2025. They also had to overcome a lot to get there. They had a double-booked venue, a restructured display strategy and a room that was hardly ideal for trying to sell collector cars. This said, they made the best of what they had, flexed their muscles on the consignment side a little bit to secure a collection and offered a solid number of no reserve cars. They also leaned into the pre-war side of things reasonably successfully (all things considered) and I think made for some genuine improvements overall to their sale which they can carry into next year for even better results.
The setup that they put together outdoors this year felt open, airy and overall, much better than the parking garage situation that they have used over the last couple of years. It displayed cars better and had an overall crisper feel which was closer in line with their Portola Plaza displays that they do in Monterey every year.
The auction room however was the most difficult hurdle for them to overcome. Cramped, claustrophobic and without the ability to drive cars onto the stage, their block staff stepped up, worked hard for their consigners and mostly accomplished what they needed to. Although results were up this year, I think the venue issues held them back and once dialed in fully, should provide for even better sales moving forward.
Once again, RM sets the standard and shows why they are where they are and I’m really looking forward to seeing what they put together next year. Despite the issues, this year felt more elevated than previous and they did better than they likely probably should have as a result.
Motorsports Auction Group (MAG)
Don’t know.
Doesn’t matter.
Definitely better than last year.
I love MAG Auctions. It is a down home, true red white and blue type of American experience that we really don’t get enough of in day-to-day life anymore and therefore, for me, it remains incredibly important and one of my favorite components of Arizona Car Week.
Their move to Cubs field at Sloan Park only further reinforces this. They undeniably also have the best American style auctioneers and block staff in the business anywhere. It is a superstar team of the best of the best of what you would expect from a traditional USA focused collector car event, they are incredibly fun to watch and the environment is fabulous. They also tend to have a great cross-section of weird and interesting cars and it’s one of those events that I always visit multiple times throughout the week.
As a lower dollar type of auction, results aren’t generally as readily available, but they also don’t really need to be. They’ve got their baseline, we know what it is and they’re going to be right around the same place they usually are. MAG is more about preserving culture than breaking markets and that’s totally okay.
This said, at least from my observations over the multiple hours that I spent there over the course of car week this year, the new venue paid off. Car quality was up, so was energy and activity on the block and although most of the cars that they were running sort of fall into that dwindling value category, what they were selling, they were doing pretty well on. There’s always going to be those who do better than others in any sale like this, but I think they beat the spread. 2025 was a win for Motorsports Auction Group.
Now, imagine what they could do if they just had a more dialed in marketing machine (call me Mike…..)
Bonham’s
$5.2M (-$6.8M)
77 Offered
62% Sold
Bonham’s had what is likely the most complicated and probably the highest stakes situation coming into Arizona of anyone. Unfortunately, I don’t think very much went as planned and they definitely had a tough day. In order to really break down what happened, I think we need to first look at how we got here:
- Bonhams has been resting on their laurels for a really long time.
If you look at the previous couple of years of Arizona offerings from Bonham’s, they were almost entirely scratch and dent situations or clearly abandoned projects. When you start to see things like this, what it generally means is they have gone back to the same well so many times that now the water is gone and they’re just scraping the mud for moisture. They’ve already sold their limited number of consigners primary group of cars and now they’re on to the stuff that’s in the corner under a tarp that nobody’s thought about in decades. It’s been very obvious for a long time that Bonham’s has put little to no effort into developing new consigners and that it was the same consignment specialists relying on estate scenarios and the same group of tired consigners that filled their under-updated Rolodexes.
As we all know, there was a major shakeup in the staff at Bonham’s in mid-2024 (as well as a pretty well executed rebrand) and I think it’s probably something that will not only benefit Bonham’s themselves, but probably the people that left as they embark on their next adventures as well.
- They are very clearly underutilizing up and coming talent.
There’s no question that Bonham’s has the deepest pool of up-and-coming talent as far as auctioneers go, in this business right now. They have genuine superstars that are coming up through their ranks, but yet for some reason they’re not using these people or giving them opportunities to showcase their full potential.
A while back, I wrote about something that I call the “Max Girardo Mistake”. For those who are not familiar, Max Girardo was (prior to becoming a car dealer in the UK) RM Sotheby’s Superstar auctioneer and an unquestionable generational talent. He was the best auctioneer in the world at the time and could control a room like virtually no one I’ve ever seen before. When you have somebody like this on your team, your only objective becomes keeping them happy and giving them whatever they need in order to continue to be great. When RM let him leave, not only did they create a new competitor for themselves within the market place, but they also walked the face of their company at the time and essentially a printing press for dollar bills right out the door too. What ever it would have taken to keep him there, they should have given him and if we all recall back to the 1939 Porsche Type 64 fiasco that occurred at the first Monterey sale they did after his era, this gets reinforced even further. Your forward facing people are your company and your greatest asset. You must protect them and provide for them at all costs.
Bonham’s currently has talent like this, but yet, they’re either out playing other sports or not even being allowed on the field in the first place. Instead, they seem to prefer to run with the traditional standards, which aren’t executing and don’t work. This mistake cost Bonham’s millions of dollars in Arizona this year and likely a lot of future consignments from newer consigners which their team so desperately needs and so clearly worked so hard to acquire.
- Unforced scheduling errors occurred.
Was Bonham’s happening on Saturday a good idea? Definitely. Positioning the start time of the sale just as a number of other high profile events in the area were ending gave them a great opportunity to try and capture that audience in addition to their standard crowd and was definitely a smart move.
Was changing the date a couple of weeks prior to Arizona Car Week from Friday to Saturday a good idea? Absolutely not. Likely catastrophic. The number of people that I talked to that had to opt out because they were leaving Arizona and traveling on Saturday morning and early afternoon was extremely high. This move cost Bonham’s dearly.
Again, I definitely think the Saturday sale is a good idea, they just need to do that from the get-go and hopefully they’ll advertise it early and continue with the Saturday date moving forward.
- They have a lot of people in the right places right now for the first time in a long time. They just need more time.
I think it would be nearly impossible for anyone to disagree that Bonham’s catalog this year was the best it’s been in Arizona for quite a while. The layout was also better, the tent was new and everything felt fresher then it has in a long time. This very clearly speaks to a change in who’s behind the scenes on the US side and that they are moving in the right direction. I worked closer with Bonham’s staff than I did with any other auction house in AZ this year and they’ve got really bright people that are really passionate and want to get to work to protect and enhance that brand. The people are always the hardest part, but once you have that it’s just a matter of dialing in little things and I think that’s really all Bonham’s has to do to make it work.
So, what is Bonham supposed to do? I think probably they just need to keep doing what they’re doing and investing in the people that they have. Resources and organization on the US side have been a pretty big issue from what I can tell with Bonham’s for a while. If they give their people what they need and the time to accomplish what’s required, I think they’re in pretty good shape. If they call in the bean counters and break out the spreadsheets, I think they’re cooked. They need a little better strategy overall, but they’ve got all the right pieces. Now it’s about putting them in the right places and connecting them all together correctly.
Barrett-Jackson
$198M (-$9M)
2,013 Offered
100% Sold
If there was one phrase that could really sum up what Barrett-Jackson did in Arizona in 2025, it would be “the more things change, the more they stay the same”.
More so this year, the influence of Barrett’s new primary ownership group, IMG/Endeavor was felt. The event side, although just as circus-like as always has consistently gotten more refined and better organized with their involvement and that was on full display this year. They also seem to finally understand exactly what they bought, who their audience is and they leaned into that too. If you’re after a raucous experience where you can also buy helicopter lessons, a 9-ft tall bear sculpture made out of catalytic converters and a lukewarm Bud Light with an $80 hot dog served by a salty waitress with an exposed midriff,1990’s centerfold hairstyle and a neck tattoo, the Barrett-Jackson experience is definitely for you.
Same goes if you’re looking to buy or sell anything from the middle section of the marketplace or an overbuilt, high-end resto mod. Almost nobody is better at that cross section of collector cars and trucks (which is significant) than Barrett-Jackson. In 2025, once again, that’s where Barrett-Jackson absolutely shined.
The reason they came up a little bit short really breaks down to two things:
- No matter how much effort they seemingly put in, Barrett-Jackson is still not good at selling high-end European cars. It has been this way for years and aside from the random, barely believable (calling David Copperfield) home run that they hit once in a while, this just sort of is what it is. This just isn’t their thing and this year they invested heavily in late model exotics and high end supercars. Like Barrett’s buxom beer gardens, results there were also lukewarm.
- Quality this year was also very mediocre overall. A big reason for this was their sale in October. For anybody that was there or anybody that was analyzing on a lot by lot basis, that sale was a bloodbath and a lot of people felt burned, lost trust and sent cars to Florida instead. Although unconfirmed, I suspect the reason for that sale was to maintain a television contract, but they may have inadvertently lost more than they gained with that move. Hopefully they can find an out-of-state, permanent home for that third sale, but adding a date to Scottsdale prior to the January sale only hurts their consignment push and hopefully they learned not to do that again.
Overall, however, it’s hard to argue with the consistency that Barrett-Jackson continuously demonstrates. Their January sale remains enormously important for large cross sections of the collector car market and by most metrics and on a lot by lot basis, where they are strongest, they did better than the numbers indicate.
So, what are the general takeaways here?
I think first, there was a lot going on in Arizona and that had an impact going both directions on sales this week. Also, although not as crystal clear as we’re accustomed to, I think Arizona did establish the general position of where to focus within the marketplace. The bottom end looked a little better, the top end is still pretty flat (at best) and wider sections of the middle of the marketplace seem to be flourishing. I think the next generation of collectors is trying to become engaged but they’re moving cautiously, have less resources and in order to push things forward, the market is going to have to figure out how to arrive at a place in order to make that work. There’s a pretty generic saying in in the Options Trading world that goes “some must lose so others can win” and I think that’s kind of where we are heading into 2025.
Figure out what side you’re on, adjust your objectives to get as close to the winning side as possible and then proceed accordingly.
That’s it for this week……
Darin Roberge