Christie's Buys Gooding & Company
Gooding & Company will be acquired by Christie’s in the latest major shakeup of the collector car world. They will become the fourth classic car auction company with major corporate backing.
Christie’s was founded in 1766 in London and has built a reputation for handling sales of artwork, jewelry, and more luxury items. In 2017 Christie’s sold a Leonardo da Vinci painting for more than $450 million. More recently, in 2022, they sold Andy Warhol’s “Shot Sage Blue Marilyn” for $195 million. Christie’s total sales in 2023 were more than $6 billion.
Gooding & Company also performed strongly in 2023 with more than $194 million in sales across all of their auctions, selling a total of 902 lots over the course of the year. Gooding & Company set multiple world record prices in 2023 including a 1968 Lamborghini Miura P400 that sold for $2,260,000 and a 1914 Mercer Type 35-J Raceabout that sold for $4,790,000, the latter setting a world record not just for the model but for the marque as a whole.
Gooding & Company's Origins
It’s fitting to see Christie’s acquire Gooding & Company considering David Gooding started his career at Christie’s, eventually running their International Motor Car segment before working for RM Auctions, prior to it being acquired by Sotheby’s. In 2003 David Gooding, along with his wife Dawn Ahrens, started Gooding & Company and have been a major force in the collector car auction world ever since.
Investments in Auction Companies
Recent years have brought about an investment into the collector car auction markets, specifically into the auction companies. The most notable, and hardest to forget, was the joining of RM Auctions and Sotheby’s to form RM Sotheby’s, a venture that seems have to steered RM Sotheby’s directly into the higher-end segment of the classic car market.
In 2022 Endeavor, through their IMG subsidiary, bought a majority stake in Barrett-Jackson for more than $261 million, seeing the opportunity to join the lucrative classic car auction business. Around the same time news broke that Hagerty would increase their ownership stake in Broad Arrow Group by acquiring the remaining 60% of the company for $64.8 million in an all-stock transaction.
The acquisition of Gooding & Company by Christie’s will likely provide greater access to capital that can be used to aid in continuing to consign record-setting collector cars, especially when considering large collections that all the major classic car auction companies will compete to consign. It’s also probable that the acquisition will lead to bigger investments in auction technology, both online and on-site.