Junkyard Gems Make Up Our Sale of the Year

I see a lot of auctions. I watch them in person, on the big screen in my house, and the smaller screens on my desk, laptop, or phone. My name is Dave Kinney, and yes, I admit, I’m an auction addict. And I’m not ashamed of that. My dirty little secret is that I have always liked auctions. Farm sales, close out electronics liquidations, home “clear-outs”, Sheriff sales, unpaid tax sales, you name it. Sometimes they are happy sales, other times they can be sad.

As a car guy, though, I like car auctions, and collector car auctions most of all. I have seen hundreds in person, and with the proliferation of sales shown on television and the internet, combined with the advent of online bidding, my obsession with watching auctions can border on ridiculousness. The good news is, that as the publisher of the Hagerty Price Guide as well as my role as an appraiser, this little fixation on auctions helps me understand the markets.

It’s also why I’ve been asked to pick a “sale of the year” among all the countless auction sales of the last 12 months. It’s a tough choice, because a lot has happened in the collector car auction scene in 2024. Gooding & Company announced its new affiliation with Christie’s. Worldwide Auctioneers continues to pretty much own the space in Auburn, Indiana at the Auburn, Cord and Duesenberg festival during Labor Day weekend. Longtime auction powerhouses Mecum and Barrett-Jackson had great years and are poised to have a great January. Broad Arrow Auctions continues its brisk but rational growth both online and in person, and their marquee Monterey sale was my second-favorite of the season. But it’s RM Sotheby’s “The Junkyard: The Rudi Klein Collection” sale that gets my “sale of the year” nod.

This is the sale that ticked all the boxes for me. It was a wonderland of stuff, and prices were all over the place. It had parts and pieces that sold for just a few dollars, and some of the cars and parts sold for truly mystifying amounts. There hadn’t been an old car auction quite like this before, and it’s doubtful we’ll see one quite like it again.

If you don’t know the details, here is a brief refresh: Rudi Klein was a German who came to the U.S. already equipped with an eye for great cars. Not a monied collector, Rudi bought, sold but apparently mostly kept a lot of great cars that were down on their luck. Damaged in an accident, forlorn, abandoned mid-restoration, missing major pieces, it really didn’t matter. The insider of his “Porche [The missing “S” is correct] Foreign Auto” yard was seen by very few people and bordered on mythical by the last 10 years of Rudi’s life. Unlike many myths, it actually did exist, and it held even more than was promised.

Lets face it. Many of us love a junkyard. Junkyards are the fields of dreams for car people, they offer not only a glimpse of the past, but hope for the future. This, however, was not your average junkyard.

Highlights included three Lamborghini Miuras in various states of disrepair, tons of Porsche parts plus a few notable Porsche cars in various states of decrepitude (there was an entire, literal wall of Porsche 356s and 911s), two crushed Ferrari 330 GTCs, bits and pieces of a 275 GTS, various Mercedes cars and parts, several special German prewar cars, plus much, much more.

I watched the sale online with a group of remote friends, and the texts were flying with guesses and excitement and comments, many of them totally unprintable. For many of us car guys, even ones who watch auctions all the time, this was easily the equivalent of a major playoff game, or some college rivalry with perhaps a touch of the Super Bowl (minus the halftime…) thrown in.

The major surprise for me was Lot 290, the Alloy Mercedes-Benz 300SL Gullwing. One of just 29 early Alloy bodied Gullwings, it was in shabby condition and missing important bits. I was expecting a sub-$6M final result. The final sale price, with fees, was $9,350,000, or well over a third more than this armchair expert expected.

In the end, the sale brought a total of $29,600,000, just about doubling the auction houses own $17,000,000 low estimate.

Great auctions should be fun, fast moving, and full of surprises. They should provide entertainment to those “in the know” as well as to the casual observer. To be an unforgettable event they should have spice, intrigue, and an element of voyeurism. Rudi, you are gone and your treasures have been dispersed, but you will not soon be forgotten. This was a sale not just for the record books, but one for the memory banks.