What We Got Wrong with Our 2024 Monterey Auction Forecast

This year’s Monterey auctions surprised us for both the caliber of cars offered and the occasional disappointment in results. Our total sales forecast for the week ranged from a pessimistic $430M to an optimistic $488M, with a mid-point of $459M. This expectation was an improvement on last year’s total of $403M. Instead, total sales of public prices were just $391.6M, or a drop of less than three percent from 2023. Even our pessimistic forecast, then, was too high by nine percent. What happened?

For context, we should first note that we share forecasted results for January’s Arizona auctions, March’s Amelia Island auctions, and August’s Monterey Car Week auctions. Since 2018, we’ve been within 10 percent of the result for eight of the 17 events and the average absolute error is 12.2 percent.

The sales forecast is based on the sell-through rate of similar recent auctions across different price levels. Cars that are seven figures or more, for example, have a different sell-through rate than those worth less than six figures. With Monterey’s auctions, because 163 vehicles worth $1M (seven-figure) or more were offered, they would have accounted for about half of the total sales measured in dollars. This year, we saw that those vehicles in the $1M to $5M range—about 90 percent of the $1M-plus offerings—had a sell-through rate of just 57 percent, below the 66 percent in our low forecast. That nine percent drop doesn’t sound like a lot, but it contributed a $58M deficit to the forecast. As seen in the below chart, only cars in the $5-10M range exceeded their forecasted prices.

Our forecast is also based on the published estimates in the catalogs. The auction companies have a good idea of the value of the vehicles they’re selling and set estimates accordingly. Further, the auction companies have a pattern of where they set the low estimate relative to the reserve. We found in Monterey this year that for many vehicles with an estimate of at least $250K, the final price was lower than expected.

With fewer top cars sold this year, more people, including dealers, were able to negotiate a post-auction sale. In some cases, these negotiated prices aren’t published. While reasonable motivations exist for keeping these private, we don’t record them as sales. If the sell-through rate for seven-figure cars continues to trend down, this will be a more significant part of auction results.

Looking ahead to the next major live auction events on the calendar, January will be chock-full. Mecum’s Kissimmee auction and its headlining Porsche 917 will be followed by the Arizona auctions anchored by Barrett-Jackson. March is kicked off with the Amelia auctions. We will likely spend some of the downtime polishing up our auction forecasting to include inputs like the Hagerty Market Rating.

If you’d like to relive the Monterey auctions and see the trends as they unfolded, our live blog is here.