The Barrett Jackson this week

[csx4910]

I will apologize in advance for the lengthy cut and paste but here is the story from our local newspaper this morning. I think they are all delusional for calling a 28% drop in sales "encouraging" but these are the prelim sales figures for the auctions last week.
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" Sales dropped 16 percent at fourValley car auctions but still managed to hit a combined $130.7 million for events that ended Sunday.
Auction houses still attracted hundreds of wealthy buyers who paid six- and seven-figure prices for dozens of rare, highly coveted automobiles. Given the economic slump, the sales decline was not a surprise; in fact, many in the industry expressed relief the falloff wasn't more significant.
Barrett-Jackson and RM Auctions each reported drops in sales of close to 30 percent, and Russo and Steele reported a 14.5 percent drop. Gooding & Co. increased its take in the collector-car auctions by 54 percent.
"The whole collector-car world was watching, fearing we would fall off a cliff," he said. "We didn't, so that's a good thing."
Scottsdale-based Barrett-Jackson Auction Co. led the auction week, reporting $63 million in sales at Scottsdale's WestWorld, down 28 percent from a year ago.
Attendance at Barrett-Jackson's eight-day event exceeded 200,000, on a par with attendance in recent years.
Company Chairman Craig Jackson was upbeat.
"It was truly a celebration of our hobby and its resiliency," Jackson said. "Sales were solid from start to finish and exceeded expectations."
Gooding also had the top-selling car of auction week, a 1960 Ferrari 250 GT California Spider that sold for $4.95 million, and six others that sold for more than $1 million each.
RM Auctions saw it sales at the Arizona Biltmore dip 32 percent, to $18.2 million.
The Canadian auction house had two major sales collapse when the bidding did not reach the seller's reserve price: a $4.9 million bid for a 1963 Chevrolet Corvette Grand Sport and a $4.5 million bid for a 1937 Bugatti Atalante Coupe.
Russo and Steele reported preliminary sales figures of $17.1 million, according to company President Drew Alcazar.
"I'm counting it in the win column," he said, given economic conditions.
DuPont said that prices were off for run-of-the-mill muscle cars but that rarer cars with a documented history are still drawing top prices."