For a short time, the impressive reach and results of Bring A Trailer auctions made some pundits question whether the large, booze-fueled in-person car auction was dead. Mecum, Barrett-Jackson, and all the rest were immediately seen as dinosaurs in a tech-laden age, no doubt helped by co-mingling restrictions ushered in by COVID-19.
That's all but done now, and as the upcoming Amelia Island exhibit shows us, those same pundits were a little too quick to begin pouring the dirt around the gravemarker they made for the showy auction circuit attended by well-heeled collectors, who show up in force both to buy cars and to rub elbows. In fact, it may be more of the latter that is meaningful for a larger portion of attendees who never actually come home with new garage art.
Amelia Island looks to return in force, and Hagerty Insurance once again appears to have threaded the needle perfectly, as their online auction platform known as Broad Arrow Group will have a sizeable, in-person presence at the event. That's a claim Bring A Trailer cannot make, and as such, many collectors don't see the digital upstart as a lifestyle brand as Hagerty is quickly becoming.
Does it matter? It's hard to say, but I don't think it's possible for BaT to have the same sort of cache as a week-long event in a gorgeous setting like Amelia Island and surrounded by beautiful millionaires and billionaires. When Hagerty bought Broad Arrow and launched its auction business, I didn't necessarily see the point given they were entering into a now-crowded space. A year later and with a significant presence in an arena BaT cannot play, I feel differently.
While the auction landscape has certainly changed, the number of colleagues that are attending Amelia tells me that the in-person auction is far from dead, and in fact has plenty of room to mature into a week-long escape that rivals the likes of the parties depicted in The Great Gatsby. And if your auction platform only exists in the digital world as opposed to the real one, the playing field may be more level than we thought.