Prices soar on last day of Barrett-Jackson auction
Mohegan — Barrett-Jackson’s three-day collector car auction sped toward a conclusion here Saturday, another sellout crowd at Mohegan Sun Arena roaring its approval as hammer prices soared into six figures.
More than 200 vehicles were to be sold by the time the gavel banged for the last time, most at prices well beyond those seen during the event’s first two days, when bidders spent more than $10.7 million on 368 cars.
Through Friday, the event's top seller was a 2016 Shelby GT-H Prototype, which went for $150,000.
Two locals with skin in the game pronounced Barrett-Jackson's inaugural Northeast event a buyer’s market.
At 1 p.m., an hour into Saturday’s auction, Mystic’s Phil Pavone watched as the 2002 Aston Martin he’d consigned to the auction rolled up onto the stage behind a 1968 Dodge Dart GTS that had just gone for $35,000.
At one point, the auctioneer announced bidding for Pavone’s car had reached $50,000 but then corrected himself, saying it was at $45,000.
The Aston Martin sold for $47,000.
“I figure it was about $20,000 short,” Pavone said minutes later.
He said that when he put the car up for auction at “no reserve,” guaranteeing it would go to the highest bidder, Barrett-Jackson staff estimated it would fetch between $50,000 and $70,000.
“It’s definitely a buyer’s market,” Pavone said. “I saw some muscle cars here that should have gone for a lot higher.”
He said economic conditions have a pretty direct effect on auction sales, which he said tend to mirror what’s happening in the housing market.
Pavone, 67, who owns AZ Pawn in Norwich, said he had no regrets about putting his car up for auction.
“It’s about exactly what car dealers were going to give me on a trade-in,” he said. “A dealer in Texas offered me $45,000 and it would have cost me $2,500 to ship it. This way is a lot less headache.”
He said sellers never learn the identity of their vehicle’s buyer.
Rich Willard, who owns Vintage Motorcars on Boston Post Road in Westbrook, had two cars in Saturday’s auction — a 1967 Volkswagen Custom Panel Squareback that went for $13,000 and a 1948 Packard Victoria Convertible that sold for $31,000.
He said he was glad that before the Barrett-Jackson event, he arranged to sell a 1928 Packard he spent decades restoring.
“Thank God,” Willard said. “That would have been the oldest car here. And I would have gotten killed.”
He estimated the ’28 Packard would have sold for around $40,000 at the auction, a fraction of what he expects to get for it.
Willard, 54, of Lyme said the Barrett-Jackson bidders generally showed more interest in trucks and high-performance muscle cars than “antiques.”
Craig Jackson, the Barrett-Jackson chairman and chief executive officer, stoked the bidding on a 1974 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am, taking the auctioneer's microphone to call the car, at $62,000, “the best buy of the auction so far.”
It then went for $65,000.
The arena crowd roared when bidding for the next car on the block, a 1966 Ford Mustang Fastback, began to approach $200,000.
“Sold, sold, sold,” shouted the auctioneer when the bidding stopped at $205,000.
A 10 percent “buyer’s premium” was added to all winning bids.
Both Pavone and Willard raved about Mohegan Sun’s handling of the event, which was expected to draw more than 60,000 people — bidders, consigners and spectators — over the three days.
“The venue couldn’t be better,” Willard said. “The way they handled all the people, you’d think they’d been doing it for years.”
“It’s been like a well-oiled machine,” Pavone said.
In remarks at the start of Saturday’s auction, Kevin Brown, the Mohegan tribal chairman, pronounced the event "the best and biggest thing that’s ever happened in Mohegan Sun Arena’s 20 years.”
Barrett-Jackson, based in Scottsdale, Ariz., will continue to hold its Northeast auction for at least the next four years at Mohegan Sun.
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