Auction Stats 
With almost $180M in sales, this year’s Amelia Auctions broke several records:
- 384 Sold Listings, vs 309 in 2020
- 452 Total Listings, across four auctions
- $177M Dollar Volume, vs $128M in 2022 and $126 in 2016
While the $460K Average Price this year was impressive compared to the last 5 years – it was not a record. We saw a whopping Average Price of $575K in 2016.
Read below to dig into the numbers, and here's some key takeaways:
- Amelia is all about quality. We saw the best of the best cross the block, and for great numbers. Even cars with values under $40K set records – showing that the market for these vehicles is still healthy, if you have a good example, even though the massive growth from the past few years has cooled.
- More recent rare classics like this pre-merger AMG Mercedes that sold for $775K (1 of 13 built in the US), are really the cars to look out for – leveling-up to the supercars and hypercars of their era.
- Ferrari's and Porsches all did relatively well, and pre-war cars seem like they are loosing some of their appeal. They don't sell as well as they always have unless they are super special – further showing the trend for high-value investments or drive-able cars.
As expected, high-end cars represented the majority of sales activity in Amelia – with 86% of all sales coming from cars that sold for over $250K.
- 58% of the total dollar volume came from sales over $1M
- 18% came from sales between $500K-$1M
- 9.5% came from sales between $250-500K
In terms of vehicle count:
- 35% of all sold listings were above $250K
- 54% of all sold listings were between $40-250K
- 11% of all sold listings were below $40K
Sell-through Rate (STR) at Amelia 2023 was 85%, which was a bit down from 91% in 2022, yet about average for the event since 2013: 86%. It's clear that the market for high-end cars is still healthy, even though we are seeing softness in other areas of the market.
Notable Sales
With the exception of a Rolls Royce Phantom I and a couple of Packard Custom Eights, most of the cars that exceeded their CMB* significantly during Amelia were cars with market benchmarks below $50K – including these three, among others:
Even cars like a 1st gen Thunderbird, which has been constantly decreasing in value for a few years now can fetch top dollar at Amelia: 4 Ford Thunderbirds sold during the Amelia auctions for an incredible $104K average.
Top Sale: Gooding & Company
Top Sale: RM Sotheby's
Top Sale: Broad Arrow
Top Sale: Bonhams
*The CLASSIC.COM Market Benchmark (CMB) is a benchmark value for vehicles in a given Market based on data accumulated by CLASSIC.COM and calculated by a proprietary algorithm that takes into account volume and recency of each data point. CMB can be used to assess the performance of a market over a given time period. However, it does not represent the value of a specific vehicle. Read more in our Glossary of Terms
Header Image Credit: Broad Arrow Auctions
