MARKET LEADERBOARD

💰 The figures shared below don’t count any other sales such as car seats, memorabilia etc..

I only include websites that have sold 5+ cars in the chart below. Which means Hagerty and many others did not sell 5 cars on Friday!

Like many of you, I'm always immersing myself in the world of cars – from attending 'coffee and cars' events to devouring articles and tuning into car podcasts. Recently, while out shopping with the family, I caught the latest episode of "The Smoking Tire" featuring Doug DeMuro from Cars & Bids.

An interesting topic popped up during their chat: the absence of weekend auctions on Cars & Bids. Doug was pretty clear about it, saying, "Weekend auctions are no good… I would not want my car to end on the weekend." He explained that weekend comparisons aren't favorable, as people are more likely to be at their computers during weekdays, not weekends when they're out, say, at their kids' soccer games.

This got me thinking – is Doug's stance backed by hard data? Are weekend auctions genuinely inferior to their weekday counterparts? Being the analytical type, I couldn't just take this at face value. So, I set myself a weekend challenge: to dive into the numbers and see if I could either validate or debunk Doug's view. Here’s what I found…

Take a glance at the chart above, and you might quickly conclude that car sales on Saturdays and Sundays lag behind the rest of the week. It's an easy assumption to make at first glance.

But hold on, that's not the full story. The catch here is that only a handful of auction platforms operate over the weekends. This naturally skews the total number of sales for 2023, making weekends appear less active in comparison.

To get the real picture, we need to dig a bit deeper into those numbers. Let's not settle for the surface-level view; there's more beneath that's waiting to be uncovered.

When we delve deeper into the top 100 sales, it's clear that weekend sales continue to trail behind weekday sales. This isn't surprising, considering there are more auctions taking place during the week. So we need to go one layer deeper.

This chart highlighting the top 10 most expensive vehicles sold this year reveals a fascinating insight: two of these top-tier sales occurred over the weekend. Notably, the highest sale of 2023, a 1997 Ferrari F50, was also a weekend transaction. This intriguing fact hints at a potential trend: weekends might actually be an opportune time to sell high-value cars.

However, it's important to note that these observations are just preliminary glimpses, not yet backed by rigorous statistical analysis. To truly understand the trends and derive meaningful insights, I need to dive deeper into the data. And this is where things start to get really interesting.

• The average price of cars sold during the weekends was slightly higher than those sold on weekdays.

• Weekday Average Price: $41,398.80

• Weekend Average Price: $42,221.20

While the number of car auctions is significantly lower during weekends, the average sale price is marginally higher. This could suggest that weekends might attract slightly higher bids per car, despite the lower overall sales volume. However, the difference in average price is not substantial to make a definitive statement either way. So I need to analyze some further data.

Ford, Chevrolet, and Porsche are three of the most popular car makes sold. Intrigued by this, I've decided to delve into their 2023 sales data to uncover any significant statistical patterns and insights.

• Chevrolet: Higher average price on weekends compared to weekdays.

  • Weekday Average Price: $43,780.59

  • Weekend Average Price: $50,086.50

• Ford: Lower average price on weekends compared to weekdays.

  • Weekday Average Price: $49,019.68

  • Weekend Average Price: $45,913.85

• Porsche: Slightly lower average price on weekends compared to weekdays.

  • Weekday Average Price: $75,858.33

  • Weekend Average Price: $73,762.14

  The data suggests that the day of the week might have a varied impact on different car makes, possibly influenced by the specific demographics and preferences of buyers for each brand. However this still doesn’t give me an answer one way or another. So I decided to delve further and look at some popular YMM (year/makes/models) to see what that might show.

In keeping with our '5-minute read' newsletter ethos, I've condensed my extensive data analysis to share three key insights with you. We'll look at three different car makes, spanning three distinct years and three varying price points. Let's dive in and see what these focused data points reveal.

First up is the analysis of the 1984 Porsche 911 Carrera Coupe sales data reveals the following insights regarding its performance in terms of weekend versus weekday sales:

• Weekday Average Price: $66,298.30

• Weekend Average Price: $67,505.56

The average price for the 1984 Porsche 911 Carrera Coupe was slightly higher on weekends compared to weekdays. This suggests that, on average, this specific model fetched marginally higher prices when sold over the weekend.

The analysis of the 2014 Toyota FJ Cruiser sales data reveals the following insights regarding its performance in terms of weekend versus weekday sales:

• Weekday Average Price: $40,291.67

• Weekend Average Price: $44,222.11

The average price for the 2014 Toyota FJ Cruiser was higher on weekends compared to weekdays. This suggests that, on average, this specific model fetched higher prices when sold over the weekend.

Interestingly, more units of this model were sold on weekends, which is a deviation from the general trend observed for most other models where weekdays typically see more sales. Does anyone know why???

The analysis of the 2004 BMW M3 Coupe 6-Speed sales data provides the following insights regarding its performance in terms of weekend versus weekday sales:

• Weekday Average Price: $41,825.75

• Weekend Average Price: $37,875.00

The 2004 BMW M3 Coupe 6-Speed, weekday auctions yielded higher average sale prices than weekend auctions, despite an equal number of sales on both weekdays and weekends.

The time series analysis shows that the car auction market in 2023 experienced a wide range of prices with significant fluctuations. Both weekend and weekday sales followed similar trends without a clear indication that one consistently yielded higher prices than the other.

Alright, this is where I fully embraced my inner car data nerd. For those who love the nitty-gritty details, follow along! But if you're in a rush, feel free to skip to the last paragraph for a quick summary of my findings.

I performed an independent t-test on the prices of cars sold on weekends versus weekdays. Here are the results:

• T-Statistic: 0.818

• P-Value: 0.414

Interpretation

• The t-statistic is a measure of the difference between the two groups in terms of the number of standard errors. A higher absolute value of the t-statistic indicates a greater difference between the groups.

• The p-value indicates the probability of observing the data (or something more extreme) assuming that there is no actual difference between the two groups (null hypothesis).

Conclusion

With a p-value of 0.414, which is much higher than the typical significance level of 0.05, we cannot reject the null hypothesis. This suggests that there is no statistically significant difference in the prices of cars sold on weekends compared to weekdays, based on this dataset.

This result implies that, while there may be differences in average prices or sales volumes on weekends versus weekdays, these differences are not statistically significant and could be due to chance.

In reviewing the extensive data points, both those discussed and others not highlighted, the conclusion is clear yet paradoxically inconclusive: neither weekday nor weekend car auction prices show significant differences.

This insight contradicts Doug Demuro's stance on the unfavorable nature of weekend auctions. In fact, the data does not support a definitive preference for either weekdays or weekends. 

From the detailed statistical tests to the nuanced price distribution and time series analyses, the evidence suggests a negligible variance in sales prices between the two.

What's more, and aligning with my long-standing view, auction platforms with adequate inventory might well consider capitalizing on weekend sales. This stance, which I've been advocating for some time, is now backed by data, indicating that weekend auctions could potentially be as lucrative, if not more so, than their weekday counterparts.