Since we don't have The Daily Vroom going out on Saturdays, I always get asked what went down on Fridays - who sold what and for how much? For us at The Daily Vroom, coming in on a Monday and rehashing Friday's sales almost feels like old news. We prefer giving you fresh daily insights and identifying emerging trends as they happen.

However, there's a middle ground we can strike without diving too deep into the nitty-gritty details. Instead of our usual comprehensive market leaderboard, let me give you a quick rundown of the top 5 sales from this past Friday.

All told, we had just shy of $6 million in automotive action with an average sale price hovering around $37,000. Three different platforms cracked the top 5, with SOMO leading the charge courtesy of their 2023 Ferrari 296 GTB sale at a cool $405,000.

Snagging the third spot was PCarMarket, who moved a 2022 Porsche 992 GT3 for $236,000. Interestingly, that's about $11k more than they fetched for a similar GT3 just last month. The key difference? This one was an automatic transmission versus the previous manual example.

You'd think with such low mileage (2k Friday’s sale vs 4k from last month) between them, the manual would've commanded the higher premium. But not in this case! Of course, I'd need to analyze way more data before definitively concluding what factors are really moving the needle valuation-wise on this particular Porsche model.

My eyes zero right in on that gorgeous '67 Corvette - it's been firmly planted on my bucket list for years. Just let that sink in for a second...a car that may have cost someone a measly 5-10 grand back in the day is now commanding $180,000! The previous owner clearly had a lead foot, optioning that Corvette with the brutal L71 427 engine, 4-speed manual, and a neck-snapping 4.11 rear end. That's serious performance hardware for its time, with a soundtrack modern cars simply can't replicate.

Then you've got that low-mileage Exclusive Series example that hammered down at $280k. After digging into the data, that price looks like an absolute steal considering its odometer barely cresting 1,000 miles. It's legitimately the lowest recorded sale for one of these in that ultra-exclusive under 1k mile category. Not surprising though - it's an absolute thrill to drive and they only made 200 units for the North American market.

An exceptional pair of four-wheeled investments if I've ever seen them. Stuff like this is why I live and breathe the collector car world!

In the high-stakes world of online car auctions, healthy discussion in the comments can make or break a sale. Too much toxicity and bidders get scared off, but censorship raises red flags about transparency. It's a delicate tightrope walk that the major platforms are navigating very differently.

Take Bring a Trailer's approach - they rely on users to flag comments as "not constructive", which then go into a moderation queue for BaT's team to review. Moderators decide whether to hide the flagged comment or let it stand. It's a human-driven process, though multiple people have alleged an unwritten policy: high-profile, frequent sellers can request comments be hidden more freely to avoid derailing auctions.

This dynamic leads to accusations of playing favorites, with power sellers potentially getting wider leeway to clean up comment sections compared to one-off listers. However, BaT counters that their commitment to educated discussion results in most comments staying visible regardless of seller status. Certainly for me, the comment section on BaT is highly educational, even if I have to sift through a number of irrelevant comments.

On the other end of the spectrum lies Cars & Bids' approach, which has drawn ire from users. All flagged comments get hidden behind a vague "The community has flagged this" label. However, users can simply click to view the hidden comments, which defeats the purpose of hiding them in the first place.

This approach makes little sense from a moderation standpoint. By allowing comments to be easily revealed after being flagged as problematic, Cars & Bids has generated complaints that potentially unproductive discussions can still negatively impact auctions and derail conversations.

Moreover, there's a psychological factor that amplifies the impact of these revealed comments. Human nature makes hidden or censored content inherently alluring - restricting access tends to pique curiosity. So by flagging comments as hidden yet allowing them to be viewed, Cars & Bids may be inadvertently driving more eyeballs to those very comments they aimed to deemphasize.

The ability to reveal hides a deeper flaw - it essentially provides a spotlight for flagged comments, undermining the intent of keeping unproductive discourse under wraps. Rather than providing nuanced moderation, this system ends up amplifying anything deemed problematic while frustrating users with an extra click barrier.

The lack of any real content moderation, combined with this spotlight effect, has led to us at The Daily Vroom receiving weekly messages about this against Cars & Bids' moderation system.

Admittedly, neither platform's approach is perfect. With so much valuable information sharing happening in comments, there's a strong case for platforms exploring more nuanced solutions.