Alrighty, good morning, good afternoon, good evening. You are listening to the All Tool Car podcast. I'm flying solo today, COVID. He's bashing our industry as well, Paul Hill's sick and Paul Ross is roaming the streets of Queensland because he's starting to have to work.
So basically it's me and we've got a special guest. We've got Daniel Dagen from Shannon's today. And good day. How you going?
Good day, Peter. I'm good, isn't you? Good, top of the world. I think we have a good layer.
Yes. But your layer kicks us. So we're recording here from Shannon's city office in our time of New South Wales. And made some goodies downstairs.
I'll tell you what, I forgot my checkbook. I'll bring it next time. Basically, we have talked about Shannon's and what they've done for, they've been around for decades and I'll just name it. You can tell us.
You mentioned the word Shannon's and everyone knows. I'm sure. Yeah. Early car, unique car.
Yeah, and I think Shannon's over the last 40 odd years done really, really well to carve out. The name for itself in Australia, the synonymous with classic cars. I've been going for a long, long time now. So yeah, we know most people here at the brand or the name, that's the first thing they think about.
Yeah, you know your market. I mean, it is, it was nations, there's people that are coming to come through, they're trying to come into it. But like we said earlier, it's a decade old company. It is, yeah.
You say the word Shannon's and it took our person. Everyone's like, yeah, we know who you are. That's right. It's a history there.
And your mind, I share the passion. You're basically telling around your car guys. Exactly. Yeah.
We want you car guys to come in and let's do it. Yeah, be part of the family. Absolutely. Yeah, that's it.
And I think that was Robert Shannon. That was his vision from the get-go that he saw not just an opportunity in the marketplace, but he saw a gap that wasn't being filled there. And obviously in the beginning, he went out to try and ensure some of his own classic cars. He was a collector in the Fusius, yeah, first and foremost.
And he didn't feel that there was anyone doing the job. So he set up his own insurance business. And leading on from that, he was an entrepreneurial kind of guy from one understand. And saw another opportunity in terms of getting into the market and actually showing that Shannon's not only inshures classic cars, but it's actually involved in the sale of them through the OCCA.
So did the sale part come up first? No, it basically followed on. So insurance was first? Insurance was first.
But basically the auctions kicked off pretty soon afterwards. So we had our first classic car auction in December, 1981, which meant that last year we were celebrating our 40th anniversary. So what would be a classic car auction? Well, pretty much anything and everything.
I don't have the catalog from 81, but I understand there was some really cool cars in that. We had a genuine HDT A9X race car, which would be worth an absolute fortune today. There was a Lamborghini Mura in that auction, which again, if we were lucky enough to have one of those today, it would be many millions. That was actually one of Robert's own cars from what I understand.
He owned a Mura back in the day. It's attractive, though. Yeah, which brought a lot of other people put cars into the auction. So that was our first ever classic car auction.
It really sort of built from there. Initially, we were only doing the amount of milk. We had a showroom there in Chollum. And then gradually, Robert evolved.
So the Shannon's insurance spread around Australia, opening here in New South Wales. We had an office up on the Pacific Highway. Initially, little by little, he began doing auctions in New South Wales, as well. He saw a market up here for it.
So we hadn't been going quite as long in New South Wales as we were in Victoria. But the history dates back 40 years now. So it's a lot of time. Yeah, he's a lot of Victoria's got a strong car culture.
It really does. It always has. I grew up in Melbourne. So funnily enough, our National Options Manager at the time, who's to work for Shannon's, Christoph Borobon.
He was running the auctions in Sydney at the time and just starting a family. So he wanted to get back to Melbourne. He was an ex-mold, as well. And I was the opposite.
I was single at the time and thought to myself, hey, what a great gig come up in work in Sydney, new city, life. And come and work for Shannon's up here. So I sort of swap states with Chris. Yeah, but you're right.
And you're much better at Sydney than I thought. I'm never moving. No, look, I'm never moving. You only have to look at the window today.
And it's a gorgeous, you know, gorgeous space. Your house is worth half a mill more than that. Excuse me. No, life is good up here.
So I'm not in a rush to move back to Melbourne. But having said that, I've got a lot of friends in Melbourne. We've got a lot of friends in Melbourne. And the car scene in Melbourne is second to none in Australia.
I mean, absolutely, you know, people are car mad down there. The diversity of the cars that are there, you know, particularly I grew up around the sort of Carlton area, around like on street, you know, Italians, the cars, the passion for them is just visible to Sydney. So first of all, to today, you know, New South Wales is a strong champion in the presence of the present, but New South Wales. Is there a percentage where you say that one state offers better cars and one state offers a bit of eyes?
Like, is there more money in one city? Was it not really better? Like to be honest, cars, I mean, they're certainly in Australia. They're one of those, let's say, commodities that can be bought and sold anywhere.
So we find that honestly, in the auctions we do, whether it's in Melbourne, Sydney and we've added Brisbane recently. OK. The cars will go anywhere, roughly half of the cars in each auction from a Sydney point of view, at least we'll go into state. So a big part of that job is obviously then organising shipping, making sure the cars get delivered to the customers in one piece and so on.
But, you know, more and more, we've seen that the distance is no barrier and I think COVID's obviously been a big part of that. People will buy side unseen from the other side of the country. You know, obviously our friends over in Perth haven't been able to get anywhere for quite a long time, vice versa. So, you know, they're basically stuck with buying, you know, via the computer online.
So, yeah, that's a big part of it, I think. But, look, probably, again, anecdotally, I don't necessarily even doubt it back up, but I do feel like more cars tend to go back down to Melbourne. Particularly when we have, you know, Italian cars, it always seems that we get just that, you know, few more phone calls and enquiries. Ultimately, bidders for things like Ferraris, you know, rarenies like we had a few, you know, spider a while ago and that definitely had everybody in Melbourne excited and ultimately went back to Melbourne.
So I feel like that definitely seems to be a big part of what we do. Yeah, and like, I suppose now it's, I was going to get to this primarily in the internet base, but even when pre-COVID, when you had live auctions, you still have phone items on that. So would your team know where the buyers would be? Yeah, sure.
Yeah, no, I'm not sure. You know, that's one advantage of going online entirely is that, you know, as you said, we were already doing phone bidding. We already had online bidding as part of our mix. During the live thing.
So that was, you know, something we probably established four or five years ago and so we had that system up and running really well, which meant it was quite seamless for us to move entirely online. It was just taking out those other two elements. Yeah, so what I mean, it's the first time I've had it. I'm pretty certain times I hate that saying that you're alive, people come and smell and touch and do what they've got to do with cars.
Something we just turned out because they like running down. When I was young, used to like running down, feeling the catalogue and going home and it was a night out. And we understand that that that's something that people have missed for two years, you know, in the way that we've all had to, you know, sacrifice things. We've enjoyed doing live events.
So when the lockdown kicked in, was it seamless for channels to go online? We had the technology there in place working well. We'd already done a couple of online options prior to Covid. Not for cars specifically.
We'd had a charity option for a whole lot of motorcycle memorabilia that worked really well. So the technology was there. It was really just a case of sort of saying, all right, can we transfer all the existing bitters and some of our older buyers were a bit of a challenge to get them to get on board with the whole online thing. I mean, we often heard this saying, you know, I don't have a computer.
How am I going to do this? But they end up doing it. You find a way, you know, whether it's a relative or a friend. We're running out of FaceTime.
It's like, there are all kinds of ways around these situations to get everybody on board. So it's worked really well. And the number of registered bitters we've got has just gone through the road for as you can imagine. So it hasn't helped that?
No, not at all. It's grown and grown and grown. And I think it's coincided with whether it's contributed to it. It's hard to say.
But the market, as we all know, has really taken off in the last two years. So that's helped. It's obviously, yeah, exactly. There's a huge uptake in interesting classic cars.
Everybody wants to be a part of it. Ironically, you know, it's in a time when you really can't do much with your car, unfortunately. But we're all fingers crossed hoping that that it'll change soon. Yeah.
We'll get back to normal. But yeah, so I think, you know, a huge part of it is that we've all had a little bit more time on our hands. We're not going out as much. We're not traveling.
So we're sitting at home on our computers. And for a lot of us, like the first thing we do when we get home and open up the computer is straight on the car. So we're selling what the auction houses got coming up. And we spend a lot of time controlling it.
And you can buy a car. That's not a loss making out. Especially the cars at Shenensel. It's your buying.
It is the investment. You're buying something that's going to improve in value. And for a lot of people, they do buy and sell cars too. So you sell something, you've got a little bit of money in the bank, and then you can say, okay, well, I haven't had one of these before.
I always thought about one of those cars. And you jump in. But it's one of those things. The market is we've had to adapt to the COVID situation where every single business in Australia and world for that matter has had to adapt.
But we've been extremely fortunate in that unlike sectors like hospitality and travel and travel and where they're struggled because people just simply can't do what they can do. You can't drink a coffee online. That's right. We're allowed to still sell cars and people are still interested in buying them.
So we've been very fortunate. But at the same time, it's also allowed Shenensel to improve the way we go about marketing the cars, the amount of effort we put into the presentation for each car online has changed a lot in two years. So again, these things, you react, but you also use it as an opportunity to improve the way you do your business. So we've got an upcoming option coming up.
So when's that? Yeah, sure. So this next option scheduled to run between the 22nd of February and as always, since COVID, it's a one week time online option. So it finishes on the 1st of March.
We've been scheduling them to run between Tuesday morning and following Tuesday evening because the entry is that's right, the bidding. That's a format that's really worked well for us. I think the very first online option we did went over the hit, we tried a two week time version and we just felt that that was extending it just a little too long. Because before that, it was, as you said, July bidding.
It was a live option. It was a live option that night. It all happened. It all happened.
It all happened. It all happened a couple of hours. It was start line and finish line. It took two weeks.
Yeah. But I think what that does is it gives people more time to muck around on the computer with a little bit of bidding. They can get involved. Maybe there's a little bit of a bidding war.
And you can see some bids in to see what happens. And you don't have to feel like the pressure's on, it takes the pressure off a little bit especially when you've got it over a weekend. So I think people enjoy the process of bidding online as much as they do coming to a live option. And it makes Monday feel good when you're in there with the chances of that the weekend.
That's right. And it all comes down to the pointy end on the Tuesday night when it all starts to close. That's really when for the majority of the cars and bikes and things we'll see the bidding really take off at the death. So if I'm at the start now I want to be.
So is it a simple process you go online? Yeah sure. application to be registered a bit if you haven't done it already. If you have already registered, you can just lock in all the details of the same.
But if you haven't done it once you've registered, you set up for the future. And it's a two-step process, we then need to just approve if we're better to make sure you are who you say you are. And once you set up, then you're good to go. Basically, once the option goes live, you'll be able to go into the bidding portal and start places.
Like getting online type bidding, like getting a database. And again, similar to that, you've got two options. You can either bid manually or you can just do a set and forget and basically program the computer to bid for you either incrementally or not. Oh, so you can set that and it'll either be up to that.
Or if you want to just go, we'll end the computer just before you want to go. Yeah. I mean, we've bought from Shannon's, but the old one, but I'm going to ask question in the reverse now. What if I'm selling for the first time we are?
How do you go about, is it as upshot as cut off dates? Is it too late for the cutting off date? It is, yeah, look, that's one of the hardest things for us is trying to get the message out in terms of the cut off date because we still produce a printed catalogue. Our lead times for the auction are actually quite long.
Typically six to eight weeks out from the auction closing. We need to have everything allotted off to the printers in order to get the brochures, not only printed in time, but these days we go again, the distribution has slowed down a little bit. So we want to make sure that everybody has it cut a lot roughly three weeks out from the auction in order to really have time to- So you still get a heart of base and you can send you mail out- We do, old school. Yeah.
It's about 30,000 people. And look, there are people scattered around this country who rely on that brochure. And so a lot of the time people have said, you know, why are we still doing that? It's a big cost.
But I'll tell you from a customer, when I look at that, well, I'll look at the online one. You'll see a card, it's got a reminder of you. It's got to, oh, my auntie had one of those and I can't believe I haven't seen one of those in filling in that day. It is nostalgic.
It's not just, you're not looking at a shopping catalogue from Woolies. People's pride at joy. And it's really hard to think from a company to say, you know, after 10 years I'm looking at selling them. Absolutely.
And it's probably got a name on it. That's right. It can be quite a wrenching process for people to let go of their cars. And you see it time and time again where, you know, tears get shed, you know, when cars have been dropped off for the last time.
And sometimes people don't want to come back and see them being sold. They want to, you know, it's one of the reasons they're closing auctioning houses. It's like a funeral for some people. It can be really quite touching seeing how emotional people become about their cars.
And we all know, I'm one of those people that I really struggled to let a car go. I still got cars that I bought 20 years ago. I don't know if I shouldn't have. Wait, they weren't going to be like you too.
I wish I was like that. But you know, some of it's too hard to let it go. Yeah. But I noticed going back to the catalogue when we hear the other week, you've got a professional photographer.
It's like there's a bottle there. Like the lights are set up. You've got your sort of corner where you're going to have to have a photo booth really talks in that respect. And it's not like a click click click and move on next.
We're going in. It's like the photographer's on his knees and getting the angles right. If you look at the brochures and the brochures are going to have one static. But that's right.
Look at the online. There's a cuisine photo. Absolutely. And we've really got the anti-on that.
I mean, I get a shot when I look back at some of the cars. Shannon's assault many years ago because our database online still goes back up in 15-20 years. And in those days it was about four or five photographs in front three quarter of the usual internet. That's the attention.
And that was it. It was no wonder people weren't comfortable buying cars without coming to see them and checking the man in person because really you couldn't with that sort of information there. But now it's more like 50 photographs and we photograph the cars from underneath. And that's one of the big advantages of this new showroom is that we've now got a hoist in every of our showrooms around Australia.
And so we photograph the cars from underneath. We spend time getting underneath the cars and understanding what they like under there. And we also are doing video presentations on the cars as well. It's just another aspect of being able to understand the condition of a car.
It gives you an overview of it. You get to hear it running. And it's just another thing we've added with COVID. So when you are buying it, are you allowed to inspect it?
Is there an inspection period that will come in? We have, look, we're open six days a week in the months leading up to the auction. And if the car has been consigned and delivered to the showroom, anyone is welcome to come in and have a look. So it's almost like a dealership?
Correct. Yeah. So the cars are made available in the layout as much as possible. We don't do test drives.
That's a big part of the risk, I guess. They're not even cars in cars. They're not even cars in cars. And we're not set up to have people driving the cars around.
So we don't do that, but we're happy to start cars for people who are showing serious interest in the cars. We'll just turn the cars on and on immediately. But people who are keen will turn it on and let them hear a run. We're also happy to welcome food party pre-purchase inspections by specialists.
So if you've got someone, you know, specialised in the series drive. You're more than welcome to have them come around. We generally won't do that offside. It has to be done on our premises.
But you've got the space. And the car will move. You've got the drive around. It can suit.
So they can spend as much time as they want going right through it. So that's fine. We don't certainly don't want people not to come and look at these cars. Ideally from our point of view, every single purchaser would have spent time coming in and checking the car out as much as possible.
If that's physically not possible, and again, we understand with COVID that not everyone can get to Sydney to do that, then we can do what we call a virtual tour. So we sit up with FaceTime or what's happening. Just walk around the car. Exactly.
In a person sitting there and they've got the mechanical report that we've had done on each of these cars, an inspection report. They can maybe ask us questions. So here it says it's a little bit of wear and tear on the seat. Show me the bolsters.
That's what it's up. That's good. So they can contact you and I'll ask you. You're open to Sydney.
The last thing we like or want to see is people who literally just bought something when I'm in, haven't done any research, haven't read the mechanical report, haven't read even a description of the car, didn't understand what it was, or purely by one photo. And that's not good for anyone in the day. No, but that's not what you're about. No, it's not good.
No, it's... Have you ever solved... You know what I'm going to ask you? Obviously, Cadillac, but was the whole bit of this.
Has there been a big, like... Sorry guys. Works up and out. Not really.
Not ones... Because if other ones that spring to mind. No, we do spend so much time cataloging the cars and going through them with the fine tooth comb to make sure they are what they are. And look, increasingly with things like Aussie muscle cars, where the risk of people getting caught out of three shells.
And look, we have had a couple of problem cars over the years. Everyone has in the industry. It's just unfortunately it's a fact of life that with a lot of these muscle cars particularly where, you know, ostensibly to the untrained eye, they don't look that much different from the base model with a big. And they all started life with roughly the same shell and everything.
So it's very easy really if you're not doing to essentially fake one of these cars. Or maybe it wasn't quite as obvious as that. Maybe it was just a car that 30 years ago was a bit of a wreck and a bit of a bit of a bit. And it got knocked back into shape when they went with anything using two or three cars and bits and bobs from this and the other.
And our job is to try and go through and weed out those cars. And look, every car has a place. At the end of the day, we're not necessarily saying, oh, we're going to rid those cars on the auction, but we just need to be totally transparent about the technology for disclosure. And make sure everybody's aware of what they buy.
We're very careful to check stampings and looking for any signs of cars that have been re-shelled or that sort of stuff. So there's a lot of work goes into preparing the cars. But that's particularly around Australian muscle cars. That seems to be the biggest problem area we have.
But then the ones that are pulling in the big dollars. And that's the thing. If you're going to spend the big bucks, whether it's $250,000 on an X-U1 or half a million on an X-U1, people want to know what they're buying. Even now with the demise of Holden, even your Commodore SL.
You can just turn up and people will repair to spend $20, $40,000 on a Kingswood wagon. Absolutely. No, the rise of the Holden market is for none. I haven't seen in my time in the classic car business at all.
And did anyone foresee it? No, I don't think so. I mean, yeah, it caught all of us by surprise really. And it's just growing from strength to strength.
It's the mundane stuff that I noticed. It's just like, you want that much for it? Don't get it. Absolutely.
Old Toronto based models, Germanis and things are suddenly worth big dollars. And there's a couple of things coming up in February. So if someone goes to your website, what is it? We've got a pretty diverse selection.
In February's option, we've got, in Sydney here, we've got a couple of really, really nice Aussie cars with some good history. One of them in particular, I love the story around it. It's an age special that lived up at French's Forest with the same family from you. Oh, wow.
So a gentleman bought it in 1963 and it was his daily drive until very recently and he's missiles have decided it's time to get a new car. All he's here is later. So they drive in. That car as far as we can tell and he tells us, definitely he's never had a liquor paint on it.
It's completely original interior. He would have kept it. He's got that car looked after it. It's just got that history around it.
So what about the first 20 years of appreciation of this outcome? Well, this is the thing. And again, 10 years ago, it wouldn't have been worth anything. But these days, with that history of that story around it, it really wouldn't surprise us if it made somewhere between 25-30 grand, which is good money for any special.
So that's one good car. We've got, I mean, there's a really, really diverse mix of stuff down there and you've obviously had a bit of a one around. I think one of the appealing things about a Shannon's option is that there is literally something for everybody. There's something to cover off every area of interest, whether it's American cars, European cars, Japanese cars, modern classics, cars from the 50s and 60s or pre-war cars.
We've sort of got covered. And we haven't a walk through before we've done it. And basically, we had a 911 turbo S906, which was like unattainable back in the day, 25 years ago. And next we've got RX-7 spirit.
You're telling me, well, you'll basically say the RX-7 is going to keep the speed of the cars. The RX-7 is going to go up. They've really taken off in the marketplace. The spirit arm in particular, that's the start of the show as far as the RX-7 is concerned.
It's a limited edition. They've got 1500. They never sold them here in Australia. The ones we've got.
They're all imports. But they've really taken off as the holy grail. The Japanese cars generally. And Japanese cars generally.
I mean, we had a GDR NER M-SPEC in the last option, R34 Skyline, of course. It had incredibly strong beating across the board. We had one similar car, same model, but it'd be SPEC about two or three years ago, and it didn't really generate as much interest as we'd hoped. But this car just kicked off in the last option.
And truly formed. Everyone was telling us you'll get a lot of interest from overseas. We did. We actually ended up selling it to a guy in the UK who was shipping it to keep with his collection in America.
And obviously the Americans have just opened the market there. That's the only thing with the silence. We were talking about the jack cars as well. They've got a 25-year-old, a couple weeks ago, some guests who bought cars in Japan.
And basically, America is the sleeping giant. They've woken up. Play station and grandders, all those games have woken them up. But now those kids have grown up.
They've got money. They're ready to buy the cars they played with on brand U. And they're allowed to. And that's it.
I think there've been a few people who've brought them in under show and display type rules and tucked them away without being able to register them. But the fact that you can now bring them out, drive them to a car's coffee in America is certainly the market has taken off over there for them. It's exploding worldwide. Because again, these cars are an international commodity.
I mean, people all around the world are buying and selling them. So we follow that market. We're influenced by it. But the picture pair was 90s.
Where American cars were called there. Steve and Aussie cars. I mean, there was a few good cars. The Japanese were minor.
But the Japanese were minor. And like an NSX. All these very large cars. And they might not have had the performance, but they got the build quality.
And technology was just so far ahead. That was the thing. And they ship out. Look at that unique cars.
They've had the parts pretty common. So the bike classic car. Some of them used to walk at it. It was the expensive hobby.
But not so much. But the internet now that you can shop around and find theres and look for things. So it's attainable now. Absolutely.
It's an inexpensive hobby. We had to be the case to fix that. Yeah. Maybe the old, the Italian cars were like that.
And we've seen a big shift in the demographic of buyers moving towards the Japanese cars over the last five to ten years. And we've moved accordingly. We're now taking on cars. I mean, I was remember when I first worked for Shannon's in the ocean area about 15 years ago.
Our mantra with Skylines back then was no imports. It had to be in Australia. It was R32. Which of course, some of it limits you because it's 100.
That's not lots to choose from. As the years have gone by, really I would put my hand on my heart and say if you had an R32 or I was delivered to the city alongside an import, there's going to be virtually no difference in the price. Especially if they're clean, you know, comparable cars. It won't matter that stigma about buying imports.
And someone has gone completely because we've grown to accept that. I think what happened, I remember back in the day when New Zealand, the back door was through New Zealand. That was the darkly ground for Japan. Because Japan got a wee crush after ten years of crushing cars.
So, Japan was the back door. And there's some of those sheet boxes going in. And that's that great import. It didn't have a good reputation.
It had all these used fans. But the credit that comes through your doors is like, yeah. And we're also in a position where we're lucky enough to be able to be a bit selective about the cars that we take for auction. We do filter them.
We don't just accept every single car that we have a phone call inquiry or an email about. So I guess it's two parts to it. Obviously, we like to expand on what we're doing. And we try to cater to a lot of different markets and suns.
So, it's not always about just saying we only want to take on the most valuable or the best condition cars. But we want to really take on cars that just have the right mix of attributes to put into auction. They're going to have enough ingredients there to make them desirable car to a group of people. So, I want to sum up the next option.
I'll ring you guys in advance. I'll just turn it up. You can just turn it up. But it's a bit of a fear.
And you've got to come through the door. So, I mean, you have a look at it. You ask about the story. We'll assess it.
The type of car it is. We'll check out in the condition of the car. We obviously have a good look underneath it. If we put it on the voice, that's great.
We'll look at any documentation, service history, anything you might have with the car that helps. And then potentially be able to give you an assessment on the spot. It might sometimes in a few cases take us a little bit of time to do some research. If it's not a car we're really immediately familiar with.
And then let you know roughly where we see it in the marketplace as a guy. You know, always trying to get people to feel conservative idea about the cars. Should I tell you what's wrong with it? Or should I just hide clothes by myself?
I hope that I'd see that the lights on. It's all going to come out anyway with the vehicle reports we get done. So, far better to be up front. It's absolutely far better to be up front.
The thing that I've learned in this industry is no surprises. Better not to have anyone at any stage in the game being surprised. Whether it's you as the seller of the car, whether it's me as the auctioneer, or whether it's the buyer at the other end. If everyone is happy that what they're buying is what they're buying, then we're all going to end up walking away from it with a smile on their face.
And that's what we want. We want happy sellers, happy auction house and happy buyers. Because if you do have an ordinary condition car and you stipulate that it's an ordinary condition, you may need to get a tractor buyer. What do you mean you got to track the buyer?
What do you mean you got to renovate when you're in a search house that's about to fall down? It's valued to someone else. You want to move in. You see the potential.
But there's a guy that can either renovate those cars or needs it for his other car for part? Everyone would love to be able to say, we'll only accept 10 out of 10 restored cars. The best of the best. About 80-90% of cars don't fall into that category.
You can't just turn away the other pool of cars that are out. The vast majority of cars we're going to get off and don't come into that heading. What we then have to do is price those cars accordingly, leaving room for the buyer to be able to spend a little bit of money down the track or immediately up to them to improve those cars. But as they improve the cars, the cars will then obviously appreciate value and you can bring it up to a highest standard.
Having said all that, one area of the market that we've really seen go gangbusters, not just since COVID, but really over the last 20 or 30 years, is the Van Tine, the project car. That's something that we've always enjoyed. People love the idea of finding an old car in the shed or hitting under layers of dust and dirt, dragging it out, bringing it to auction, excitement of, wow, it's come to Shannon's. The level of interest we get in those cars is off the charts.
We've had quite a few good ones here in Sydney that have been involved with over the last few years. Everything from a diverse Rolls-Royce Phantom 2 that we call out of a shed and a tiny house in Randwick, where it's been sitting for about 40 years up on blocks, to an A9X that had been sitting under, I was sitting in a storage cage in an apartment block up on the northern beaches. The fellow that had been working, I believe, in the mines in the West for decades and hadn't seen the car. It was actually stored at his sister's apartment.
She was selling it and needed the car to go. So we went over there and he hadn't fired up in years, but we managed to get it started and drive it out of the yard. They say that, don't wipe the dust. No, not at all.
Leave it as it is because that's part of the appeal. We've had some great porsches that we've found. One family in Sydney here had an all 356 coupe that was living in a lane two in the lane cofier. You could see it from the road and apparently people were starting to pinch parts off it.
So they only brought up near the border with Queensland and trailing the car up there. This is a long, long time ago. Then we went out into the bush and actually built a little kind of a lane two for the car. They were determined that nothing was going to get stolen off it again.
Basically built a shed around this car and then covered it up and forgot about it. It sat there for years and years with all the bush growing around and everything. Unfortunately I didn't get a garden seat and pulled out, but they dragged that car out of there. There was no back end in it.
So they got a dolly axle for it. To pull it out. Got it onto a trailer, dragged it down to Sydney. So we went for auction and it went really, really well.
We've had another 356. It was a cabriolet, a very rare, ridge-wheeled option, cabriolet that was here from a family up in Brisbane. It had been stored under a church for decades. It had been in the family since I believe about 1971 when the family that was selling it, their grandmother, had tried to get it.
That thing needed the mother of all restorations, but because it was such a rare model being a cab and the Roger Wheels alone, we're potentially going to add six figures to the manual. It ended up selling for a record of a million dollars to a guy who's taken it to his own restoration business in Victoria. He's actually going to have the car completely brought back to the region. So that appeals to some buyers.
Absolutely. That's what they're looking for. It's a long time. Is there any cars that you throw at?
We're not going to get some of it due to world, but you're just surprised with what the hell they're paying. There's no accounting for taste with some cars. I don't like cars that maybe don't peel to myself or you or most people. They go gangbusters.
I won't necessarily blame them because it might upset a few people. We're constantly surprised by... Are they a gangbusters? No, not the spring to mind, but we are constantly surprised by certain cars that you just can't put your finger on what it is.
There's something intangible about that specific car, but it just does really well. An example that springs to mind is we get a lot of Mustangs coming through the options. A lot of Mustangs. Sometimes they'll tend to sell around the same price level.
Sometimes they don't do so well. Even again, one will just take off and fly. You can't pick why they're particular cars. They'll not let them in.
We get off a lot of them. A lot here in Australia. For whatever reason, sometimes just the right combination of color, specification, maybe if I want to ride in Drive Car at that time, it's got the right everything. It just ticks every box and then they will fly.
Not many people know if there's a difference through your car or your achieve, but they weren't a handful of them in America in Australia in the 60s. There were a few Australian cars. They were built on the right-hand drive cars. I don't know whether they track the pre-walls.
You do know which ones they are. Absolutely. I believe we've had a couple of them over the years. I could be wrong about that.
That Australian history, and it doesn't matter whether it's a Mustang or one of the things I learned early on because I grew up in the 70s. I was before my time, but I didn't realize just how many American cars, for instance, and European cars, particularly American cars, were delivered here in Australia, knew through Holden, Ford, Chrysler dealerships and so on. We got a lot of their cars assembled here locally under license delivered from Canada, right in Drive. It's still built here as well.
There's lots of things. The SBC and ZE, there's a real history here. Some of the cars you really wouldn't have thought would have been built in Australia. I think what we've found over the years is that history, particularly with some of the American cars, where they're factory right-hand drive and Canadian built right-hand drive cars, they do sell for quite a big premium.
They have a real following when they come to market. A good example of that is the tri-five Chevy's 5567s. We've had quite a few stacks delivered cars come through Sydney over the years. They're mainly base models, six-cylinder, four-door, postcars.
That's what we got. But people like that history of the fact that it was sold new here in Sydney. So that's a part of the cars. It's amazing.
The guys just over there. It's an amazing collection. And you're right, this auction is just a catastrophic one. I was going to ask you with your future auctions and past auctions.
They're pretty much a bit quarter. But they used to be more like seasonal, it's the summer auction. This is still in Japanese. We just built them in seasonal auctions.
So this is still technically our summer auction. But I guess because we've now combined Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane in the one catalogue, it does change the way the auction schedule calendar throughout the year has run. And one thing we're going to do this year, again, always trying to mix it up and try new things, is separate memorabilia out from the other vehicle auctions. Because the list was just getting so long with the number of cars and bikes and so on.
That to try and do memorabilia justice we just find it's not working as well as it could. So what we're going to do is separate now. Is there a bit of buy a separate buy from the car buy-up? Not necessarily.
But they compliment one another quite often people will be looking at cars and spot something, you know, for the mancau. Absolutely. So whether it's a tin sire or another or pinball machine or something to go in the mancau, they'll see that and buy it. But I think by having dedicated memorabilia auctions rather than limiting ourselves to just a handful of pieces each auction and unfortunately having to turn away a lot of really great items.
And we've ended up with a big backlog because of this. To be able to say yes to more people and put those items through in the future, a dedicated memorabilia size will be great. And we're going to do two of those a year this year to see how that goes and potentially build on it in the end of the year. The other unique part of the auction game in Australia especially is the number place.
Yeah. Indeed. Can I say what the fun? Absolutely.
For those of us who don't get involved in the number plate market and like how much are in that group. Why has that thing reached the same year as the other places? Well, it's some expensive units in some cases. They don't break down.
They just piece a lot. Absolutely. But you're on your appreciation. Big factor.
I mean people aren't just buying these in hope. You know, they've analyzed the growth. They don't go down. They may sometimes plateau for a year or two if the market generally slows down.
Yeah. That's fine. But when it kicks off again the plates just take off. There's fixed supply.
Absolutely. There's no edge here. Yeah. That's right.
So, correct me if I'm wrong. So basically when the first car came to New South, I like to say it's a state-based. That's right. So the RTL, whatever the power was called back then, the force and engine.
The force and motor buggy. Yeah. It was number one. That was the first car registered in New South.
Number two. And then on and away. That's right. Yeah.
And then you've got six digit not plates. So you got into the six digit plates and again I'm not an expert in the area. Yeah. So don't quite mean this.
But I believe somewhere in the around the 19, before the 1920s, basically they reached somewhere in the 200,000 kind of range. And then they switched to the combination of three letters followed by three digits. So in theory, there were only a couple of hundred thousand heritage plates issued. However, obviously the RMS over the years have subsequently released some of the higher number six digit plates because there are six digit plates in circulation.
Yeah. But they couple it's. That's right. They are still considered a heritage plate and they do still have a value.
So we don't turn those away. But if you're looking for a plate that was released in the period, you'd be back into that sort of anywhere from 200 whatever. And they have a big one up. Actually, they are.
The ones are. This is like a proper steel bar. That's right. Yeah.
And look, we get one released from the RMS each year who, you know, we're really grateful to the RMS for entrusting channels with number plates and they haven't done for many years. And the big roads in Melbourne have done the same down south. So some of those, some of those are not plates are not from vendor. No, that's right.
There are actually plates that have either been relinquished over the years that they are mass and big roads have been recycled. And they're just cleaning their estate. Or perhaps in some cases, they've never been released to the public for whatever reason. So they have a never decreasing pool of plates that they will sell this way.
They're basically very careful about how they go about. For a list of those. You can't go to the RMS and order a 5 digit plate. You've got to buy private plates.
This is the only way for people to actually buy this plate. And one of the nice things about buying them direct from the RMS is that they will actually supply a box set with brand new and animal plates. So they remake the plates. They've got the metal presentation case.
And that's why, again, once a year, people see those, those other plates in Sydney. That's with the RMS. Big roads do it throughout the year with Shannon's down there. So again, those plates come through much more regularly.
But in New South Wales, we're just focused on doing it once a year, which is always the first option of the year. So that happens to be the one coming up. So again, we've got our 30 number plates from RMS in this side. Is that your name to Australia?
I don't see anyone in America or the UK or because we've got overseas as well. I don't really know too much about the market overseas for number plates. I believe in the UK they have a similar collectability to the plates here in Australia. So my understanding is that the first number plate in England, I may be completely wrong.
I think it's A1. So if you've got that code plate is incredibly valuable. And again, you can transfer that plate. I don't know whether here in Australia it used to be that you had to actually sell it on a vehicle.
And it was quite a few decades ago. Now they changed it, but they did change the system so that you could actually just sell the right to transfer the plate from A to B. We're in America. It's more young in California.
The custom plate. The five letters, seven letters make a word. And that was like, wow, then we call it 30 years later. You don't see your miracle plate.
It goes well. I don't believe in America. There's the same value attached to those old plates. I think people collect number plates over there, but they're not doing it for the point here.
Yeah, exactly. Spinning millions of dollars on a specific plate. Here it's crazy. We saw it.
I was lucky enough to be part of the sale of number four a few years ago. And we sold that for just $2.5 million. And that was just amazing. I mean, I don't think anyone realized that that time just how strong it was.
I don't know if it's an urban myth, but do you know the plate for number one? Have you heard the story about that? I believe it's with the original family. So I've been told it's with the original family that they got for clues over high.
They kept it. They kept it. They bought the first car back in the day. That's fine.
That's fine. It's just been first off. Generation, generation. We had a single plate like that in our last sale.
So we had number 96, which for some of the older listeners might remember the TV show. Number 96 and we kind of wondered whether that might play a part in the interest in it. But it did really well. It had been in the same family since new.
Handed down again across generations. We sold a just shy of $1.5 million. It wouldn't be $5.5 million. It wouldn't be $1.5.
Well, that's interesting thing about the plate. It was on a couple of different cars over the years. It's not a burina. You do see it.