Joe Sackey figures that over the past three decades he has privately sold cars worth $200 million. But last year, as Bring a Trailer, the fast-growing auction site for collectible cars was booming, Mr. Sackey and his son Sterling sensed opportunity.
“Now, the world was changing,” said the elder Mr. Sackey, 60, a former financial planner. “People had gotten more and more comfortable with shopping, buying and selling online.”
Their niche is supercars, which they loosely define as high-performance vehicles built in limited numbers by marques like Ferrari, Lamborghini, McLaren and Bugatti. Most of the automobiles are less than 15 years old. In November, the father and son, in Laguna Niguel, Calif., started their Sackey and Company website to auction off these premium vehicles.
Their first transaction was a whopper: a one-off silver-and-red liveried 2003 Ferrari Enzo , which went for $3.7 million. The site soon followed in December with the $1.7 million sale of a 1967 Lamborghini Miura .
Meanwhile, Bring a Trailer was setting records of its own. With gross sales of $828 million, the firm more than doubled its previous high revenue of $398 million, in 2020. Randy Nonnenberg, the Bring a Trailer co-founder and president, said Covid restrictions were fueling online activity. Begun as an online auction business just seven years ago, Bring a Trailer has grown to become the world’s largest public platform for the sale of enthusiast vehicles, said Brian Rabold, vice president for automotive intelligence at Hagerty, an insurer of collectible cars and specialty vehicles that also tracks market data.
“The very biggest sales are still mostly conducted privately,” Mr. Rabold said, “and eBay isn’t really comparable — they sell used cars of all types as well as parts and accessories.” Even though live public auctions recovered somewhat from the 2020 impact of the pandemic, he noted, Bring a Trailer notched a remarkable 2021.
“Five years ago, BaT cars were still mostly going in the twenty thousands,” he added. You wouldn’t think of selling a $1 million car there. That’s clearly not the case anymore.”
Indeed, all 10 of Bring a Trailer’s highest individual sales topped a million dollars in 2021, with a 1961 Mercedes 300 SL roadster nabbing the No. 1 spot at $1.4 million. All told, the site sold 17,846 vehicles last year — more than 300 a week, on average, and nearly 64 percent higher than the year before.
“There’s a lot of money in the marketplace right now, and people are investing in diversified ways,” said Randy Nonnenberg, the site’s co-founder and president. (Bring a Trailer was acquired by the Hearst in 2020.)
Two strong trends are driving results, he added: Covid-19 restrictions, which resulted in an overall increase in online activity, and what Mr. Nonnenberg termed “a freedom narrative.”
“One category that really emerged last year was the increased demand for classic trucks and four-wheel drives — Scouts, Broncos, Blazers, Land Cruisers and old farm pickup trucks,” he said. “Folks seemed to have a dream of getting out into the country, away from the confined spaces that Covid imposed on us. Even if they were in an urban area, they wanted to have a foothold in that dream.”
Another distinct trend, Mr. Nonnenberg said, is the changing definition of a collector vehicle. “There is a continuing evolution in what is highly prized and highly collectible and nostalgic,” he said. “Twenty-five-year-old cars from the 1990s are becoming ‘old’ classics, and cars from the early 2000s are highly sought after.” A Radwood event, celebrating cars of the 1980s and ’90s, which are newly coveted as collectibles.Carlos Jaramillo for The New York Times Last year, Bring a Trailer auctions drew nearly two million comments, and the site registered more than 200,000 new users. An active legion of commenters pepper each auction entry with informed dialogue. “Watchers” track the bidding via email and may jump in at any time with bids of their own. In 2020, for example, a tiny — and rare — Austin Mini beach car attracted more than 500 comments and 1,000 “watchers” before selling for $230,000 to a collector in Germany.
Besides smallish competitors like the Sackeys’ site and Marqued , a recent venture by Porsche Digital, Bring a Trailer can expect bigger challengers in the year ahead. One looming rival: Bonhams, the British auctioneer founded in 1793.
After acquiring The Market in Britain, an established auction platform, Bonhams unveiled its own auction site last year. (Established auction houses like RM Sotheby’s and Gooding & Company already offered online events and public sales.) A European website was added last fall, […]
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