Monterey Car Week 2025 Predictions
Hi Friends!
It’s that time of year once again! The catalogs are out, events announced as the world eagerly awaits what is undoubtedly the super bowl of collector cars in Monterey, California. Quite a few key changes have occurred between now and 12 months ago. A number of events have changed ownership, Christie’s has entered the chat and the marketplace has continued to shift towards later model, more retro type offerings.
What hasn’t changed is the level of vehicles on offer this year. It’s big car after big car after big car on the peninsula again and somehow the auction houses seem to be able to continuously top themselves here. Bottom line: The lineup of cars for 2025 is seriously, seriously impressive.
I think the question that most people are asking themselves this weekend, however, is, are we in a better place than we were 12 months ago as far as the market is concerned? We’re seeing a lot of indicators that say that we are. Without a doubt, 2024 was an incredibly challenging year for collector cars and although I think it’s clear to everybody that we haven’t recovered the level where we were at the beginning part of this decade, it does seem like we are back in line with where we were towards the end of the last (and Hagerty has looked into this and backed this up as well).
This said though, the bulk majority of really big stuff that’s on the peninsula this year kind of all fits into the same category. Sure, we’ve got some great exotics and things of that nature, but the star cars largely remain mid-century in nature and this leads me to question why there’s so many big cars like this on offer at the same time (for example, Gooding Christie’s has three Ferrari Californias – two of which are extremely significant as well). Are there going to be buyers for these cars and what are sellers going to be willing to do in order to lock them in?
I think there’s really three possibilities in Monterey this year:
The good: Sell through rates are high, buyers and sellers intersect at a reasonable place and everybody leaves happy.
The not as good: Sell through isn’t great, a lot of cars don’t find buyers, but sellers aren’t dropping their pants to make a deal and instead choose to take their unsold cars home
The ugly: Fire sale situation. Big cars get sold 20% to 30%+ below low estimate, reserves are getting pulled super early everywhere and the market gets flooded with wholesale cars which dealers will find difficult to sell later.
Obviously, I’m rooting for option A, but I think option B and option C (unfortunately) are probably more realistic.
Let’s take a look at the individual auction houses:
(click auction company name to see their online catalogs)
Obviously the biggest “off season” changes occurred here and it looks like it’s helped. Gooding’s catalog is enormously, enormously impressive. Up and down the line is one serious car after another and it’s clear that the cash injection offered by Christie’s has helped their consignment efforts considerably. Their biggest question is going to be their ability to sell the big cars. If they can do that, they walk away winning Monterey this year I think probably pretty easily, but it’s coming down to their top offerings. I think there’s no way they don’t do better than they did last year no matter what happens and I’m definitely looking forward to watching that alloy body 250 California Competitizone cross the block
For the last several years, obviously, RM has owned Monterey. It’s definitely been their signature sale and they have produced almost all of the major moments in Monterey over the last decade or so. Although they don’t have any really eye popping offerings at the top of the catalog (The F40 LM and 375 Spider are damn cool though. There’s no question about that) but up and down the line is extremely high quality, very sellable cars and if anybody is the most consistent and had the catalog with is what is probably the widest degree of safe offerings, it’s RM for sure. I don’t think that they’re going to walk away the big winners this year, but if Gooding can’t get their big cars done, I think RM’s tortoise and the hare approach probably pays off. I suspect that they’ll wind up in about the same place that they were last year however. Maybe a little better or maybe a little bit worse, but they’ll still do well.
As we all know, Broad Arrow is out in the world, doing the work and definitely spending the money. I think their efforts are reflected in their catalog this year as well. They seem to have found a little bit of a niche with JDM in particular following their NSX-R sale earlier this year and I think that’s a positive thing for them. Although it’s hard to deny that they still have not caught up to RM or Gooding, I suspect that they will do better this year than they did last year. It’s definitely interesting to watch this brand develop. Especially with what’s behind them and how they’re approaching the marketplace and how everyone else is reacting. This week will be just another chapter in that saga for them.
I kind of get the impression that Mecum is sort of checking out of Monterey a little bit. Over the last two years, I really started to notice this more and more and I think their big announcement of the Blanco 250 GTO for their Kissimmee auction in January kind of solidified this for me. This year’s lineup does have some great stuff, but it does look more like a marketing exercise with January being their moment of world domination, for which they are really proving a point. Last year was a bit of a tough haul for them and I think this year will probably be a little bit better, but they probably aren’t going to be the ones mentioned in the headlines this time next week.
If Mecum is starting to check out of Monterey, it sure looks like Bonhams is checking out of everything in general. I was having conversations as recently as like two weeks ago with pretty significant auction sellers in a couple of different locations around the country and they had little to no idea if Bonhams was even going to do a sale in Monterey this year. There’s been little to no marketing and car announcements consist of two collections and not much more. Social media has been pretty stagnant for them, there’s been little email marketing and I think everybody’s kind of scratching their heads trying to figure out what they’re doing over there right now. They’ve got a bunch of talent, I know they’ve purchased equipment in the last 18 months that I’m sure is going to be used there (as it was used in Arizona in January), so I’m not really sure what the deal is. I will say this. The collector car world is a much better place with Bonham’s active and doing auctions on our shores. I very much hope that they don’t plan to pull out in 2026, but from what we’re seeing in Monterey right now, that’s a real concern. I certainly wish them the best of luck on the peninsula this year, but I think that they’re probably going to have kind of a long day over there.
Here’s how I think each of the houses are going to place in overall sales in Monterey 2025:
- Gooding Christie’s
- RM Sotheby’s
- Broad Arrow Auctions
- Mecum Auctions
- Bonham’s
As always, it should be quite a week, I’m rooting for everyone and we should know a lot more about what the marketplace actually looks like on the next one.
Enjoy Monterey Car Week everyone!
That’s it for this week……
Darin Roberge