“The Louis Coetzer Estate Collector Car Auction has without a doubt set a market standard as to how collector cars should be bought and sold,” Kevin Derrick, Creative Rides owner, said of the recent sale staged by his company and High Street Auctions in South Africa. “It’s shown that the true value of collector cars is established on the auction block.
“The auction exceeded our expectations on every level, from the extraordinary amount of consumer interest to the number of registered bidders to the prices achieved.”
The sale of nearly 140 cars from the collection of the late Louis and Hermien Coetzer drew 275 bidders from nine countries. The Coetzers perished earlier this year in an off-roading accident.
“The highest hammer fall of the day was just under US $70 000 for a 1958 Mercedes-Benz 300 Dora, while US $60 000 was paid for a 1953 Mercedes-Benz 300 Adenauer W186 as well as for a 1964 Mercedes Benz 220 SE Coupe,” Derrick reported.
“The rare 1967 Mercedes-Benz 230S Fintail station wagon sold for US $52 000, a 1965 Pontiac Catalina convertible for US $47 000 and a stunning 1964 Ford Thunderbird for US $53 000.”
High Street director and lead auctioneer Joff van Reenen called the global interest in the Coetzer cars staggering.
“We’ve completed our web traffic audit from the launch of the auction marketing campaign in late October to the final hammer fall of the sale on Saturday, December 5, and the numbers are South African auction industry record-breakers,” he said.
“The first to note is the massive online viewership of the auction itself. High Street’s virtual auction platforms live-streamed the six-hour sale from start to finish on Saturday, with a now-confirmed global audience of just over 10,500 individual viewers.
“Second is the pre-auction promotional video that was uploaded to various social media platforms a month before the sale. During that one month-period, the video was viewed more than 600,000 times.”
He added that the bidder volume for the Coetzer Collection set records for a South African collector car auction.
“This sale also conclusively demonstrates the consumer market’s acceptance of virtual auctions as safe, effective and canny platforms on which to trade high-value assets,” he said. “This is the future global auction floor for collector investment cars.”
