With impeccable timing, the publishers of the latest edition of the essential collectors’ cars price guide launched their latest edition into a world reeling from one financial crisis to another. This does not lessen the importance of the 378-page masterwork – quite the reverse.

For many years published as the ‘Bolaffi Catalogue’, this year’s authoritative review (now entirely in English) once again summarises the price movements – via detailed analyses of auctions – of classic cars from Abarth to WRE (no, I’d never heard of them, either, but you get to learn quite a bit from this book…).

The yearbook is prefaced by a Market Analysis of the 2007 – 2008 seasons by industry experts such as James Knight (Bonhams), Simon Hope (H&H), Simon Kidston (Kidston SA) and Max Girardo (RM Auctions, Europe). None of them pulls punches and they do provide some genuinely insightful comment – I won’t spoil it for you, but it doesn’t look too bad at the top of the market.



There then follows several pages of charts and lists where trends are analysed and ‘Top 100s’ by value are produced for the years 2006 – 2007 and 2007 – 2008. A particularly interesting sequence is the Ferrari Market overview where you can discover the number of cars offered, the percentage of cars sold, and the average price achieved. So, in the latest 2007 – 2008 period, you can see that the average price is at its height ($564k) - but only 66% sell. Interesting stuff.

The Top 10 cars for the period are then analysed in detail - with some nice colour photography - and the book then proceeds, marque by marque, to list the major auctions’ (Bonhams, RM, H&H, Gooding, Coys, etc) results for the period. These are accompanied by b/w photographs and occasional comments.

The prices achieved are given in local currency and converted to sterling/dollars/euros at the applicable rate of the time.

At 39.90 euros this represents excellent value and should be an essential volume on any serious collector’s bookshelf.

For further information on how to buy the Hagerty’s Classic Car Auction 2006 - 2008 Yearbook, please email the publishers:

Historica Selecta SRL [email protected].

Text - Steve Wakefield
Photos - Classic Driver