You could call last weeks RM Sotheby’s auction in London – EPIC. Mind-blowing. Crazy. 

While the Pebble Beach auctions were lackluster (see our post here), just a few weeks later RM Sotheby’s  puts on a killer auction and estimates got blown away. In some cases the final result was £1m above the high estimate (like with the  Porsche 911 GT2). This is serious money here.

So what happened? 

A very strong Porsche collection of 993 and 964 models came to the market. 

It was a rare occasion for Porsche collectors to snap up the supercars of the 1990s in superb condition and the prices were expected to be strong.

One collector friend of mine James Marks (who has one of the best watch collections out there in my opinion) had the perfect watch analogy, ‘it was as if several NOS Patek 2499 fourth series came on the market – of course the results are going to be strong‘.

Or as Simon Kidston told me, ‘if you’ve got unquestionably the best of anything, there will still be people willing to fight over it. These cars were the best: in terms of model, provenance and documentation. No gaps, no excuses, and no hassle’.

When a 1995 Porsche 993 GT2 with only 12’000km comes to the market and a one owner car – well then people are going to fight for it. The final result was a mind blowing £1.8m. We are talking $2.4m here – that is more money than a 1960s 250 Lusso Ferrari is worth today. We are talking about a Porsche car made in 1995!

The 964 series 911 did particularly well. A 1993 Porsche 964 Turbo lightweight S sold for nearly £1m (974k) – another million pound modern Porsche! Another 964 model – the 1993 Porsche 964 Carrera RS 3.8 sold for a mind-blowing £716k – yes that is another million US dollar Porsche 964 model that got sold.

The rest of the usual suspects in the RM Sotheby’s sale (Ferrari, Aston Martin, Porsche speedster, Porsche RS 2.7) faired only average. A 250 Ferrari Pininfarina S2 convertible fetched £1.28m ($1.7m) market correct and nothing spectacular, a Porsche 2.7RS touring sold for £460’ooo (also market correct) and the rare DB4 GT sold for £2.4m (or $3.2m) a strong price and a slight premium but nothing extra -ordinary. Another Aston Model that faired relatively well was the DB 4 series II that sold for a strong £515’000 (or $685’000) – again a slight premium but nothing super crazy and certainly not world record breaking.

The RM Sotheby’s results were clearly driven by the exceptional Porsche sale.*

What also could be taking place and is that a new generation of collectors are coming to the market and interested in buying drivable cars that are becoming future classics. The Porsche collection is a good example of that. Many collectors aged 40+ want the car that they grew up with but was unaffordable and now these are the collectors that are driving the market (I already saw this trend taking place in 2015 and wrote about it here).

As Kidston notes, ‘there’s a new generation of buyers with younger tastes and the money to back them up. Watch this space’.

(For full disclosure I personally own a 1993 Porsche 964 Jubilee).

* There are rumours that one US billionaire in his early 40s bought almost all the Porsche’s at the RM sale. This, if true, would explain partially the skewed results that were way above normal expected prices.

by Edmond Saran