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If you’ve decided that now is the time to sell your classic car, you’ve got a few options to weigh up. You can sell it privately, take it to a specialist dealer or try your luck at the auction.

The best option for you depends on how quickly you need to sell your classic.

Selling privately will allow you to set the price you deem your classic is worth, but it might take a while to find the right buyer who is willing to pay the asking price. Plus you risk ‘tyre-kickers’ and those who just want to feel what it’s like to test-drive a classic car.

Meanwhile, selling to a dealer might see you get less for your classic than advertising it privately – as the dealer has their own margins to think about for the resale – but you’ll avoid the work and expense of advertising and dealing with enquiries, viewings and test drives.

The third option available to you is the one we want to discuss in a bit more detail in this article: selling your classic at auction.

We’ve already produced some top tips for buying a car at auction in a previous article, but now it’s time to flip it on its head and help you get the best price for your classic.

After all, you might have put a lot of time and effort into bringing your pride and joy up to scratch and ideally, you want to see that reflected in the price when the hammer eventually comes down.

So, let’s break down the car auction process to help you decide whether it’s the best way for you to part with your classic car.

 

What are the pros and cons of selling your car at auction?

All means of selling a car have their pros and cons, as we touched on above, and taking your classic to auction is no different. Just like you do when buying insurance for your classic car, you need to make an informed decision on what’s right for you.

The obvious upside of taking a car to auction is that you can almost guarantee a sale.

The risk is that you don’t know who will turn up on the day, so you can’t be sure that you’ll get what you think it’s worth, although you can put a reserve on it to protect against a lack of interest in your classic. We’ll come onto that later.

That being said, who’s to say there won’t be significant interest in your vehicle at auction. You might get lucky and have two or more buyers who have been looking for a classic just like yours for years.

While there’s an element of luck involved in who turns up to auction, you can increase your chances of attracting the right kind of buyers by taking it to a specialist auction house.

For valuable classic cars, a good auction house will help you prepare your vehicle before advertising it widely pre-auction to a targeted audience. In this case, selling at an auction is likely to be the best way to maximise your return.

Which auctioneer should you choose?

The obvious starting place is your local auction house.

A simple search of ‘car auctions’ on Google will provide you with plenty of options – check out their respective websites to get a feel for whether they are suited to selling classic cars.

If that’s a little too niche or them, they might struggle to attract the sort of buyers that would benefit you.

Most auction houses will sell a wide range of cars but might have specialist auctions for different classes of cars e.g. classic cars.

However, you might want to go straight to an auctioneer that specialises in retro and classic vehicles such as Bonhams, Coys, and H and H. It depends on where you are in the UK as to where you sell your classic – but you might want to travel if you get a good feel for an auction house.

An extra £30 in fuel could prove well worth it if you end up taking your classic to an auctioneer with a wide, engaged and potentially international audience.

If you do decide to take your classic on a bit of a road trip in order to get the best price for it, bear in mind that auction houses, especially specialists, often like to offer prospective buyers the opportunity to view any lots prior to going under the hammer.

So, you might need to take your car to the auction house a week prior to ensure it’s there in time for pre-sale viewings. Make sure it’s protected with the right classic car insurance for any journey – whether you have it transported to the auction house or drive it there yourself.

 

How much does it cost to enter a car at auction?

As you might expect, using an auction house to sell your car comes at a price.

There’s usually an entry fee that you’ll have to pay regardless of whether your classic car sells or not, which can be anything up to £100-150. If it does sell, you need to pay commission to the auction house on top of the entry free.

The rate of commission varies from auctioneer to auctioneer and depends on what you’re selling and how much it sells for.

Commission can be anything up to 10% of the sale price, which is a fair amount of money when you’re talking about a sale of £10,000 and higher.

Classic car auctioneer Mathewsons, star of the TV show Bangers & Cash, breaks down its commission rate, which serves as a good indicator of what you can expect to pay:

Up to £499 = £50.00 + VAT

£500 - £999 = £75.00 + VAT

£1,000 - £2,000 = £150.00 + VAT

£2,001 - £20,000 = 7.5% + VAT

£20,001 and above = 5% + VAT (please see example below)

e.g. Sale Price £25,000. First £20,000 @ 7.5%. Remaining £5000 @ 5.0%.

Should you put a reserve on your vehicle?

It’s normal to be a bit concerned about whether or not your car will reach its true value at auction. That’s where setting a reserve price can provide some peace of mind.

Having identified a suitable auctioneer, they will typically ask for photographs of your classic along with some details of age, mileage, service history and condition. They will then ask you how much you think the vehicle is worth, which they might agree or disagree with.

It pays to do your research so you have a good idea of exactly how much your car could reach at auction – this will help you set a realistic reserve price.

With a reserve price in place, if bidding on the car doesn’t quite take off and reach the level set, then the vehicle will go down as unsold.

However, if the bidding reaches somewhere close to the reserve price, you might be asked to meet them in the middle and accept a price just short of your ‘asking price’.

At the end of the day, it’s up to you whether you accept a price that comes up short of your expectations – we know how hard it can be to part with your pride and joy, let alone for a low price.

However, it’s always worth considering the lower bid, weighing up how much more you’d end up taking home if it did reach its reserve price – you might find you’d have to pay more in commission and you only end up marginally better off anyway.

 

How can you prepare your car for auction?

It goes without saying that you want to ensure your classic car is looking its sparkling best for auction day.

Also, it’s worth remembering that pre-sales viewings will allow prospective buyers to get up close and personal with your vehicle.

Just make sure you have classic car insurance in place in case of any mishaps while people are inspecting it!

Here are some tips on preparing your classic car for auction:

• Give it a thorough wash and polish. As a classic car owner, you won’t be a stranger to a bit of elbow grease. However, if time is short, you might want to turn to the professionals just this once and pay for a thorough valet. Having your classic gleaming will make it stand out to buyers at both the pre-sale viewing and on auction day itself.
• Top up the oil, coolant, and windscreen washer fluid. It might only be a quick job, but it will show prospective buyers that you have looked after your car and given it the care and time it deserves.
• Consider getting an MOT done. In May 2018, the rules were changed and now any vehicle that is older than 40 years no longer needs to be MOT tested. This 40-year rule is a rolling date. For example, if a car was built in 1981, it won’t require an MOT from 2021 onwards. However, even if your classic car is exempt from requiring an MOT, you should consider having one done anyway. Nothing encourages bidders to take a firm interest in a vehicle like a full MOT on a nice, sparkling classic.
• Present the car’s service history. If you have a full service history for your classic, you should definitely go to the effort of taking a photocopy and leaving it for buyers to see at the pre-sale viewing. This will go a long way to encouraging potential buyers that your car is a safe place for their money. Make sure you give the original documents to the auctioneer.

As we’ve already mentioned, you should get your classic to the auctioneer well in advance of bidding.

Some auction houses will arrange to come and collect your classic car, but this will usually come at a cost.

You might like to save money by delivering it yourself – with a bit of luck, it’ll be a one-way journey…

Do you need to be there on the day?

You don’t have to attend the auction in person if you’re busy on the day or you’d prefer not to be there.

However, it can often prove to be an entertaining day. There’s a real thrill in seeing hands flying up in the air for bidding! Plus, you’ll get to meet the new owner and make sure your classic is going to a good home.

If you’ve set a reserve price, the auctioneer may ‘bounce bids off the wall’ to get things going.

This means that they will continue the bidding even if only one person is showing an interest as a means of trying to get the price up as close to the reserve as possible. They know you’re unlikely to accept a final bid if it is way short of the reserve price.

Equally, of course, it can be quite disappointing to see your car not reach the reserve price, if you’ve set one.

You might even be tempted to place your own bid on another lot at the auction. If you do, just make sure you’ve done your research and a close visual check before you begin bidding.

If your vehicle sells, the auction house will arrange to send you a cheque or to pay the money – minus their commission – into your bank account within two weeks. That gives you just enough time to think about the next classic you’re going to buy!

 

Choosing the right classic car insurance

If you end up bidding on a classic car when you put yours to auction, don’t forget that you will need to get some classic car insurance cover before you drive it away.

As we’re specialists here at Lancaster Insurance, we have access to classic car insurance and vintage car insurance schemes in the UK.

As a leading, reputable provider of classic car insurance for over 30 years, we are committed to offering our customers a wealth of experience and exceptional customer service.

We work with carefully selected underwriters to enable us to offer both comprehensive and bespoke insurance solutions, with our customers in mind.

Using our great experience and knowledge of the industry, we are able to quote for virtually every classic available, even those models that are hard to insure.

To get a quote for your classic, call our team on 01480 484826 today and you’ll be on the road in no time!

Policy benefits, features and discounts offered may very between insurance schemes or cover selected and are subject to underwriting criteria. Information contained within this article is accurate at the time of publishing but may be subject to change.