Mohegan — A golf cart went for $7,500 Thursday afternoon, the first sale of Barrett-Jackson's inaugural Northeast auction at Mohegan Sun, a three-day event that’s setting records for attendance at the casino.

Well before the Day One fumes had settled, Barrett-Jackson, the Scottsdale, Ariz.-based collector car auction company, announced that tickets for daytime sessions today and Saturday had sold out within a few hours of Thursday’s opening.

Consignments sold out before the auction began, with nearly 600 vehicles likely to be snapped up over the three days.

“The inaugural Barrett-Jackson Northeast Auction became a success within the first few hours with record crowds and an unprecedented sell-out of both tickets and consignments,” Craig Jackson, the company’s chairman and chief executive officer, said in a statement posted on the Barrett-Jackson website. “We also added more bidder seating and increased the number of auction personnel to support them.”

Barrett-Jackson will offer a limited number of twilight tickets for 5 p.m. admissions today and Saturday. Collectors can still apply to bid online and by telephone.

Gates opened at 8 a.m. Thursday, with an “automobilia” auction taking place from 10:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. By 2, when the collector car auction began, Mohegan Sun Arena was filled to capacity, with certified bidders occupying reserved seats on the floor in front of the stage erected at one end of the arena.

After welcoming remarks by Kevin Brown, the Mohegan tribal chairman, and a rendition of the National Anthem, cars began to file across the auction block.

More than 170 sales were scheduled Thursday.

The vehicles were driven slowly across the auction block, pausing while an auctioneer extolled their virtues and conducted the bidding with a machine-gun delivery. More than two-dozen other auctioneers dispersed among the bidders to track bids.

Each vehicle sold in a matter of minutes.

More than an hour after the golf cart sold, a 1997 Jaguar XK8 Convertible went for $8,000. Soon after, a 1971 Datsun Pickup whose "owner drove it six miles to work every day for 30 years," sold for $16,500.

During bidding on the pickup, an auctioneer noted it came with the original key and the owner's manual.

In a charity auction, a custom 1969 Chevrolet Camaro Convertible owned by Greg Olsen of the NFL’s Carolina Panthers sold for $100,000, with all of the “hammer price” going to the Greg Olsen Foundation.

One of the more than 1,100 certified bidders, Peter Fecteau, a used-car dealer from Morrisville, Vt., said it was his first visit to a Barrett-Jackson event as well as to Mohegan Sun.

Partial to Pontiac GTOs and “muscle cars,” he said he was looking to buy something for himself rather than for resale.

“Of course, when you’re a dealer, everything’s for sale,” he said.

Fecteau, his wife and another couple had driven down Tuesday in an RV they parked in a Mohegan Sun lot, and planned to stay through Saturday.

The women, Fecteau said, were “shopping and gambling” while the men were at the auction.

b.hallenbeck@theday.com