The Daily Vroom

Good morning Vroomers

Welcome to all our new readers - great to have you with us.

Yesterday delivered just over $8m in online sales. We tend to focus on the headline results, (congrats to Collecting Cars for having the highest sale yesterday) but the reality is that the market is driven by attainable cars. Fewer than one-third of yesterday’s sales cleared the $40,000 mark. That’s the norm. That is where volume lives.

You’ll notice something new in the Market Leaderboard (below) as well. Hagerty continues to push listings from the Generous Collection, which means they’re now a regular presence in the leaderboard.

And while The Daily Vroom is built around online platforms, the live auction world still shapes the bigger picture. Every now and then, a result or a story deserves attention. Today, it’s a new live auction company that has just delivered an exceptional debut sale, and it’s worth a closer look. Read all about it below.

MARKET LEADERBOARD

💰 The figures shared below don’t count any other sales such as car seats, memorabilia etc… All online auction sites are analyzed to put this leaderboard together.

I only include websites that have sold 5+ vehicles in the chart below.

When Comments Kill the Momentum

This RUF-modified 930 Turbo should have crossed the finish line yesterday. The listing was detailed, the presentation was strong, the car had just been through a major mechanical and cosmetic recommissioning, and the interest was clearly there with bids building into the three hundreds. For most of the week, the story was about the car.

Then, in the final stretch, the story shifted to the comments.

A bidder, raised concerns about mileage history and the repaint. Reasonable points. Exactly the type of scrutiny the platform encourages, and something serious buyers do want clarified before committing that kind of money. But those questions arrived right at the end of the auction, and suddenly the seller found himself having to defend months of restoration work and record-keeping with the pressure dial turned all the way up.

Sellers are ‘told’ to stay calm, stay professional, stay neutral. Buyers want transparency, not emotion. Yet anyone who has ever sold a special car online knows the feeling: after eight days of answering every question, holding your nerve, refreshing the page every minute, someone arrives late in the game and suggests the foundation might not be as solid as it appears. And when that happens publicly, while the bids are still climbing, emotions enter the room whether you invite them or not.

The seller pushed back hard. He insisted the car was exactly as represented, pointed out that the mileage discrepancy was known and documented, and reminded everyone that repainting a car to a high standard is not a red flag but part of the restoration process. He wasn’t wrong, but tone can hit differently in the final minutes of an auction.

Buyers read the tension. Confidence wavered. Bidding stalled at $305,000. Reserve stayed in place.

Nobody won.

This is the tightrope of high-end online auctions. Buyers playing defense. Sellers feeling their car’s credibility challenged. The truth usually lives somewhere in the middle, but it only takes one late volley of uncertainty to shift the entire psychology of a sale.

This RUF will find a home. Cars of this caliber always do. But I genuinely feel for the seller here. You can spend eight days answering everything perfectly, and then one late comment sparks doubt and the energy flips. That is the game on these platforms. The last hour is never just about the number. It is tone and timing and trust. Momentum is fragile, one push builds it, one poke pops it.

YESTERDAY’S TOP 5 SALES

Want to dive deeper into any of these listings? Just click on the car to take you directly to the listing.

A New Player Just Shook Up the Live Auction World

We have been spending a lot of time on The Daily Vroom talking about presentation and engagement on the online side of Collections. Better photography and better storytelling have quickly become the expectation. Collections are being curated as events long before bidding even starts.

But while online has dominated the conversation (certainly here on TDV), a very different momentum is quietly forming in the live auction world. And it is coming from a name a lot of people in the car space still do not know: Richmond Auctions.

They are not like the legacy houses. Their background is not in glossy catalogs or prime-time TV coverage. They built their reputation in a surprisingly adjacent category: high-end petroliana. Not just competing, they are leading. They now hold the world record for a sign, a Musgo Gasoline sold for over $1m. That kind of track record earns trust when you start talking about entire car collections.

Cars were never the original plan. But credibility at the top end of one enthusiast market often becomes the bridge to another. And this past weekend, Richmond stepped across it with the Tony Townley Collection.

Over $25m in sales. More than 1,000 people attended in person. Some of those sales included a Boss 429 ($600k). Charger Daytona ($605k). A ’69 Camaro ($260k). A stunning ’56 Lincoln ($220k). Even the prewar pieces, usually the softest part of any sale, found strong, competitive bids.

What really changes the narrative here is not the results themselves, but who delivered them. Richmond is a startup. Nimble. Founder-driven. Willing to rethink how to reach bidders instead of just relying on the same mailing lists everyone has used for the last 30 years. And that shift in approach is clearly resonating with a group the industry often assumes live auctions have already lost.

Buyers under 55 showed up. And they showed up with intent.

It makes sense. Established platforms like Barrett-Jackson and Mecum have massive built-in audiences. They can run the same playbook every year and still fill the room. Newcomers don’t have that luxury. They have to go hunting for buyers who haven’t already chosen a “favorite” live auction house. Richmond did that, and they connected with a demographic the old guard rarely talks to directly.

Call it authenticity. Call it access to the people running the event. Call it a fresh environment that feels less like a closed club. Whatever it is, it worked. 

The collector-car market has room for the established titans and for innovators who see the next wave of buyers forming. Richmond clearly knows which side of that equation they want to play on. They are not trying to be the next everything-to-everyone national spectacle. They are looking for the right sales with the right stories, and they are making bidders feel like those stories are worth stepping into.

One weekend is not a legacy. But you do not generate this kind of attention by accident. The big names in the room noticed. And so did I.

I love seeing someone new refuse to play the game the old way and get rewarded for it.

Enjoying The Daily Vroom?

Pay it forward by sharing this newsletter with an automotive aficionado in your circles. Your endorsement allows us to accelerate our growth.