💰 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+ cars in the chart below.

After seeing those eye-popping top sale prices, I was bracing for an underwhelming overall total sales figure. But $5.6 million for the day? Not too shabby, all things considered.

That said, the leading auction juggernauts Bring a Trailer and Cars & Bids both experienced a bit of an off day compared to their recent stellar performances. BaT in particular had an unusually high 36 vehicles fail to meet reserve and go unsold. For some context, most smaller platforms don't even run 36 total auctions in an entire week!

To view each listing, please click on the cars. See my take below.

Every sale has its own unique story, and this Cher Ferrari Dino 246 GTS auction was no exception. If attaching a celebrity name helps drive up the price, you better believe sellers will milk that angle for all it's worth, even if the celeb owned the car 50 years ago! And in this case, it seems the Cher provenance did command a premium over comparable Dino sales. Not that I'm complaining - even with the inflated price tag, this was still a solid deal in my book.

But let's talk about the real drama - apparently one unlucky bidder claims he bid $567,000 right at the last second, only to get sniped by someone else's higher bid that didn't re-trigger the extended bidding window.

According to him, he bid at the exact same time as someone else, and the system didn't add another two minutes. That doesn’t quite add up to me. If he bid simultaneously with someone else, their bid would have shown, but there was only one bid above his.

Also, the only two bidders at the end were him and this other bidder, so it's doubtful a new bidder suddenly popped up.

More likely, his computer's clock was slightly behind BaT's official time, so his "last second" bid wasn't processed quickly enough. Rookie mistake waiting till the final moments! You're just begging for timing issues and missing out. Don't be that person sweating bullets as the countdown hits zero.

Moving on to another top seller, how about that 2024 Corvette Z06 Convertible 3LZ that hammered for $145,000? Back in December, these were fetching $170k-$180k with flippers pocketing $20k-$30k premiums. But with a $151k MSRP, this seller actually took a loss after fees. The flip game only lasts so long before that well runs dry.

Speaking of fees, one interesting comment caught my eye about BaT potentially "eating" their cut to help close this deal.

It's not well known, but their terms ( I read them!) do allow BaT to pay the difference between a seller's reserve and the highest bid out of their own pocket in some circumstances. The language is vague though - it seems intended more for after an auction fails to meet reserve, not necessarily mid-auction like this commenter claimed. So in this case I’m pretty sure this didn’t happen, as BaT are very good to sticking to their terms & conditions.

Most other platforms do employ negotiation tactics with the fees at the end if it’s really tight, it’s how deals get done. It's all part of the auction madness we love to dissect here at The Daily Vroom!

Like many fellow auction addicts, I'm subscribed to all the usual platform emails. So when an alert from PCarMarket hit my inbox about their website being down due to a Midwest data center issue, my intrigue was immediately piqued.

As the day progressed, more ominous updates trickled in - not only was the site still kaput, but yesterday's scheduled auctions were being postponed until today. Time to do some digging to uncover what was really going on behind the scenes.

It turns out the culprit was PCarMarket's hosting provider, Liquid Web, experiencing a major outage. And from the sounds of it, PCarMarket didn't have any backup servers or redundancy plan in place to keep operations remotely functional. Not an ideal situation when your entire business revolves around that online presence.

Even as I'm typing this at 1am, the PCarMarket site is still down for the count as Liquid Web claims they'll have an update in the morning. You can be sure the PCarMarket team is frantically exploring contingency web hosting options about now. This is the kind of snafu that would have any auction platform re-evaluating their infrastructure.

While clearly an issue outside of PCarMarket's direct control, one has to wonder about their lack of failsafe protocols for an incident like this. Any reputable hosting provider worth their salt offers redundancy and automatic failover services these days. Hopefully, this serves as a harsh wakeup call for PCarMarket to get a backup solution implemented ASAP.

Because at the end of the day, we all want a reliable place to indulge our bidding ADD without worrying about the website crapping out mid-auction. Uptime is king in this digital age. An outage of this magnitude is simply unacceptable for any player looking to compete with the big dogs of online auctions.

Switching gears now. We've reported here previously about the potential of the right partnerships to help boost an auction platform. Hagerty has had some success with getting some collections together (many no reserve). And we've had some fleeting partnerships from other platforms that have been hit and miss.

The latest partnership to be announced has been by SOMO. They have an exclusive partnership with Rally Point East to coincide with Porscheast, (this Saturday the 15th) an annual celebration of the legendary Porsche brand, crafted for Porsche collectors and enthusiasts alike.

As the online auction partner for Porscheast, the SOMO team has put together a curated selection of Porsches spanning more than half a century. From a 1967 Porsche 911 R Tribute to a 2022 Porsche 911 GT3 Touring.

What I like about this partnership is taking the online platform offline into the real world to get new people aware of the platform and the cars they are looking to auction. With the event being so relevant to the cars being auctioned off, it makes a lot of sense.

I firmly believe that all the platforms should be doing offline events either through partnerships such as these or like the many car and coffee events that Collecting Cars does. If you can connect the brand to local enthusiast people, it helps build the brand.

This is exactly the kind of strategic cross-promotion I love to see. By taking their online marketplace into the real world at a highly relevant enthusiast event, SOMO gets vital face-to-face brand exposure. For the passionate Porsche people attending, they get to kick the tires on some museum-quality inventory before heading online to bid.

I've been beating this drum for a while now - these kinds of offline activations and partnerships are critical for auction platforms looking to expand awareness and cultivate new bidders. Collecting Cars has seen success with their Cars & Caffeine meetups. But joining forces with an established marquee event like Porscheast? That's some next-level synergy.

At the end of the day, this SOMO x Rally Point East link-up checks all the boxes. It connects the online platform to a hyper-relevant real-world experience. It surrounds prospective buyers with a perfectly curated sampling of inventory to whet their appetite. And it reinforces SOMO's brand positioning in a crowded marketplace.

More auction houses need to be getting this creative with their outreach and partnership strategies. Because in an era where everyone is glued to screens, sometimes you have to pull them out into the real world and deliver those in-person wow moments. Porscheast attendees will be getting just that kind of immersive experience thanks to this collaboration.

Which makes the missed opportunity by Marqued all the more baffling. For those unfamiliar, Marqued is an online auction platform operated as a venture of Porsche Digital, Inc. You'd think an official Porsche-backed company would be all over an event like Porscheast - a captive audience of rabid brand evangelists.

Instead, Marqued seems to have gone down the wrong path entirely by trying much too hard to be the "cool kid" auction platform. They invested heavily into pumping out reams of overly stylized editorial content that simply didn't resonate with their target buyer. Rather than leveraging that crucial Porsche lineage through smart event activations and affinity partnerships, they blew a golden opportunity.

It's a cautionary tale for auction platforms getting too cute and neglecting the fundamentals. While a strong brand voice is important, at the end of the day, this is a passion-driven enthusiast space. Connecting at a visceral, experience-driven level is what truly moves the needle. Marqued had an inside line to the most rabidly loyal gearhead base, but squandered that inherent advantage chasing an overly curated "vibe" rather than leveraging the power of in-person activations.

SOMO's Porscheast partnership is a prime example of how to do it right - aligning an online platform with the real-world gathering of its exact target demographic. Whether Marqued course corrects and learns from others' successes remains to be seen, but it's certainly a story worth monitoring as platforms fight to differentiate themselves.

Just a quick catchup. In yesterday’s poll question ‘Which approach to moderating comments on online car auction platforms do you think is most effective?’

Not surprising that the majority of you preferred the BaT way rather than Cars & Bids who allow you to still view the hidden comments.