Barrett-Jackson
No surprise, the big one continues to be Barrett-Jackson, which has evolved from a collector car auction, to a life-style event and is now a television production. For 2008, the take had been right around $83 million, down from 2007's record $110 million. For 2009, that number came in around $61.2 million, or about 26.3% drop from last year. Is that bad? Not overly so, but if you look at the two year decline from 2007 (about 44%), that is cause for concern if you’re in the business office.
We talked to some consignors during the sale and got a mixed response. Some were happy, but some were quite upset. Hot rod consignors in particular took a beating. Conversely, the guy who had an early production 1957 Chevrolet had hoped for $90-100K, but realized 150K instead. The family with the 1st production T-bird had hoped for $300K, my pre-sale estimate was $250K, and it was a real sale at $600K, highest of the auction. So stuff is still selling, but on a far more selective basis.
As far as we know, the same bid policy we reported on in Las Vegas (see B-J Las Vegas report on page 15) applied here. Funny thing is, usually there is scuttlebutt in the bidding arena about what cars were buy-backs or otherwise non-sales. This year though, it seemed considerably quieter.
All 200+ of the GM cars were absolute sales, but there was a rumor going around that there were some execs at GM that had not been informed of this sell-off and were not too happy with some of the cars being released, especially some of the Corvette prototypes.

RM Auctions
Over at RM, sales were off as well. At $20,000,000, a decline of about 28% from levels they had been over the last two years. General activity here was off a bit more than the others, but there were some good sales recorded. High sale was a 1967 Ferrari 275GTB/4 Berlinetta at a slightly disappointing $918,50 (with fee), closely followed by a 1954 Dodge Firearrow III concept car at $880,000.

Gooding & Company
Bucking the trend, Gooding & Co. registered $30.2 million in sales, a very strong gain over their $22 million in 2008. A big help here were the six cars that topped the million dollar mark. Included was a Ferrari California Spyder that fetched $4,840,000, giving Gooding the top-dollar single sale in Arizona for two years in a row. A large part of Gooding’s success stems from their reputation of doing right by their customers, and the strong personal relationships that David and his operatives have established throughout the collector car world.

Russo & Steele
The R+S official tally came in at $17.1 million, down about 10% from last year. Pretty darn good considering the economic climate.
We were at Russo on Friday night. It was electric, people were really interested in bidding and when the money was on a car, the “grinders“ were all over the sellers. Of the 34 cars we watch cross the block, 23 sold, and they were real sales. R+S is unlike any auction arena out there.
Top sales were a 1955 Mercedes Benz 300SL Gullwing at $660,000, a 1964 Shelby Cobra CSX (2519) at $495,000, and a 1970 Plymouth Hemi 'Cuda - 'Nicolas Cage' for $440,000. Prewar honors went to a 1937 Cord 812 Supercharged Phaeton at $401,500.

Silver Auctions
Silver Auctions at nearby Ft. McDowell estimated its sale to be about half of its 2008 $7 million event. A pretty heavy hit, and reflective of the lower part of the market overall.

Conclusions
Arizona in 2008 recorded about $160 million in total sales. For 2009, around $128 million, a decline of about 20% overall. Certainly not a stellar performance but given what’s going on around us, good enough to be called a success. By next issue, full numbers will be in, and we'll give you a much more detailed analysis for your review. We'll also have results from subsequent 2009 sales, which should give us a good handle on the start of the 2009 collector car market. - Phil Skinner