The Wall St Journal ran a feature to mark 100k auctions at BaT:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/bring-a...nberg-fa23e131
And if that link doesnt work for you, the article is titled:
"How One Guy’s Car Blog Became a $1 Billion Marketplace: Bring a Trailer is where obsessives buy, sell and geek out over classic cars. The company pops open its hood after 100,000 auctions to explain why."
If you don't subscribe, it might be behind a paywall for you, so I will include a couple of takeaways from the story:
- BaT held its first auction in 2014
- Unlike the big auction houses where seller and buyer might EACH pay 10% to the house
, BaT charges the seller $100 to list and the buyer pays 5% commission that is capped at $5k.
- Revenue and volume were already trending up at BaT before the pandemic, but then took off
- In 2022, BaT held 25,000 auctions which totaled more than $1 B in sales
Lots of strong opinions here in CC about auctions etc. Me, I am glad to see something like BaT succeed, so that it remains an option as a marketplace for car enthusiasts. Certainly not the only option, not even the primary option, but competition for the big auction houses is a good thing.
Disclosures: I have no affiliation with BaT. And I have never participated nor even attended an auction by one of the big players [just seen it on TV
] Bought a car for my teenager at an insurance / wholesaler auction once. Price was too good to pass up so I took a chance, and got lucky. Figured I would not be so lucky a second time....