I've found myself listening to podcast after podcast, YouTube video after YouTube video of people talking about the collector car market recently.
I'd hear soundbites like "it feels like the market is flat if not slightly down", "it's a buyer's market out there" and it was all a bit soft, a bit wishy washy.
Everyone talked about it but no one was presenting the data.
So that's what this piece is going to do.
By the end you will have a clear view of what really happened in 2025 globally and by market, what performed well, what didn't and what 2025 might hold.
Let's go.
All data has been analysed by The Classic Valuer and is based upon verified sold prices from over 40 auction houses around the world.
What happened to prices in 2023 vs 2024?
Put very simply, the collector car market overall saw prices fall 10.2% between 2023 vs 2024, down from £24,750 to £22,223.
Almost all the analysis in this report will use the median price, that ensures the data isn't skewed by outliers. The median is the middle value in a list of prices when they are arranged from lowest to highest, so here the middle car in that list would've be worth £22,223 today, or just over £2,500 less than last year.
Keep in mind that the above chart isn't adjusted for inflation. Global headline inflation in 2024 is projected to be 5.2%, in the UK the annual inflation figure is currently just below 3%.
What that means is in real terms the collector car market has seen prices fall c. 14% in 2024.
Why have prices fallen? We'll get to that more thoroughly in a moment but it's an amalgamation of three factors:
Consumer confidence / political instability
Interest rates
Supply
Before we get there, the market when you focus on classic vehicles, defined as those 40 years or older for the purposes of this, saw very similar results with the market down 10.6% year-on-year.
That makes sense globally, what happened to prices by market though?
This is where things start to get particularly interesting - price changes in the UK, US and the EU present a hugely varied picture.
Prices in the UK fell 14% between 2023 and 2024.
Prices in the US fell 14% as well between 2023 and 2024.
Price in the EU rose 14% between 2023 and 2024.
First thing to note is how bizarre that all the figures display 14%, don't fret I've tripled checked them.
The second thing to say is the more considered point, when you look at what's going on in each of these markets you can stitch together the picture of why prices have moved as they have.
Stay with me as I try to explain this.
You'll generally hear people blame two main factors for price movements.
1 - Consumer confidence, in the case of 2024 this was primarily held back by significant political instability.
2 - Interest rates, the higher they are, generally the more downward pressure on prices.
Let's map those two factors against our key markets.
US - Prices fell 14%:
The US, and much of the globe, was awaiting the result of November's election to see if Trump or Harris would take office, with vastly differing politics this created significant uncertainty. People and markets don't like uncertainty, this put downward pressure on prices.
The US saw the interest rate set by the Fed fall from 5.5% to 4.5% - a whole basis point drop. This puts some upward pressure on prices.
UK - Prices fell 14%:
The UK also had a change of Government with Labour winning the July election. Speaking with many dealers and auction houses they sensed people holding back until the uncertainty was resolved. This uncertainty puts downward pressure on prices.
The UK also saw the base rate fall 0.5 points from 5.25% to 4.75%, a slightly smaller cut than was seen elsewhere in key markets. This puts upward pressure on prices but given the scale of the cut, not as much as other markets.
EU - Prices rose 14%:
Politically the EU was very quiet for the first half of the year. This is great for consumer confidence. The backend of the year saw France dissolve its National Assembly and the Prime Minister ousted in December. Germany also saw instability when Chancellor Olaf Scholz lost a confidence vote in November with elections scheduled for February 2025. Now, whilst these are significant events there are mitigating factors which make their impact less significant. The key one is the lead up time, the UK and US elections were known about long in advance, the French and German changes were very quick moving items, therefore you didn't have that anticipation in the lead up of people sitting tight as they didn't know it was about to implode. This means there was only limited downward pressure on price.
Interest rates in the EU fell dramatically from 4.5% to 3.15%, the largest fall of any of our markets. This puts upward pressure on price.
To recap what we've got so far:
The US saw politics drive down prices and interest rates drive prices up. One up, one down, but that doesn't explain the 14% fall.
The UK saw politics drive down prices and interest rates drive prices up somewhat. One slightly up, one down, but that doesn't fully explain the 14% fall.
The EU saw politics drive down prices slightly at the end of the year and interest rates drove prices up. One up and one slightly down, but that doesn't fully explain the 14% rise.
So what explains the price movements?
Supply.
Remember in school when your teacher would talk about supply and demand economics, the idea that when supply increases and everything else remains the same prices for that good or service fall.
It's the same with cars and this is what's completing the explanation of why prices have moved in certain ways.
At the top level, 2024 has seen more cars come to auction than ever before.
The US has seen 40% (!) more vehicles come to auction in 2024 than in 2023 - adding that into our picture from above explains why the 14% fall occurred.
The UK has seen a 2% fall in the number of vehicles at auction this year. Combining that with the slight upward pressure from interest rates and downward pressure from the election explains the 14% fall here.
And to complete the picture, we have the EU where we saw 13% less cars come to auction in 2024 than 2023. Once again, combine that with a big interest rate cut and some political instability gets you to your 14% rise in prices.
Thanks for sticking with that - hope it makes sense.
What else is there to know?
People often see prices rise or fall and think they might be explained away by simply more or less expensive vehicles coming to market rather than the market value of vehicles is changing.
We can test that by looking at the data on a model-by-model basis.
When we analyse the 200 most popular models in our database, 76% of those have fallen in value from 2023 to 2024.
The average price fall is 8%, not dissimilar to the 10% fall we've seen at an overall market level.
This tells us that it's not cheaper cars coming to market but rather the market value of those cars has fallen.
This pattern is repeated when analysing by make. Looking across the top 50 most popular makes, only 4 of them have risen in value in 2024:
Austin-Healey +1%
Citroen +3%
Rolls-Royce +8%
Lamborghini +22%
So no, its not cheaper cars coming to market, rather the market value of those models is falling.
What types of cars performed well in 2024?
Long-time readers of our content will recognise the graph below, 'The Wave'.
Named by us as such as it shows the price change for cars produced in the 1920s through to 2010s since 2019 and like a wave it comes from below the surface, rises up, crests and falls away again.
It is THE best display of changing tastes in the collector car market.
It shows the increasing desire of late for 1970s - 1990s vehicles and the falling demand historically for pre-1950s vehicles.
When you run the same graph but instead of comparing 2019 to 2024, you compare 2019 to 2024 you get the result below.
There are a few things to call out here.
Every single decade is now seeing price falls across the board, the extent of which varies greatly.
The 2010s has seen the largest price fall down 24%. A large chunk of these vehicles are purchased on finance and given the average interest rate remained higher in 2024 than it was in 2023 on average this has made financing these vehicles more expensive and therefore downward pressure on prices.
The 1920s has seen the best performance, perhaps another sign of hope for the old guard. Looking back over the past 5 years shows the median values for 1920s vehicles bouncing consistently between £15,000 - £20,000 - not a continued decline like many thought.
The 1980s has seen the second strongest performance as more collectors who grew up with poster cars from the 80s on their wall enter the market.
Aligned to the above, the below cars from the 1980s performed well.
The later Porsche 930 with the 3.3 Litre saw prices across all variants rise 21% on average comparing 2023 to 2024.
Early Testarossas (1980s) also performed well with prices up 22%.
What about demand for collector cars?
There's two points to make here.
Firstly, if we wind the clock back to the end of H1 2024, at the mid-point of the year prices were down 13% globally vs the same period in 2023. Prices now are down 10% over the whole year, we've gained back some ground. Why? Well the elections for the most part are out of the way and interest rates are falling and are forecast to fall further through 2025.
Secondarily, sell-through rate indicates a stabilisation. The sell-through rate (the number of vehicles that sell at auction as a percentage of the total that come to auction) in 2021 was 78%, it fell to 72% in 2022, it fell again in 2023 to 67% but the great news is it has stabilised and now sits at 68%.
Wrapping up
If you remember nothing else from this piece let it be these three things:
1 - Prices are back down to 2021 levels with the market for both all collector and classic cars falling 10%. That's highly fragmented by market with the UK and US down 14% and the EU up 14%
2 - Falling prices aren't always a bad thing. Yes, it inhibits the investments people are willing to make in their vehicles which has knock on effects across the industry but it also opens up cars to existing collectors that would've been unobtainable and also new collectors tempted by great value.
3 - If we think back to three reasons why prices fell in 2024 there's reason to be hopeful for 2025:
Consumer confidence / political instability: major elections are behind us in the UK and US setting the path for stability and thus price rises
Interest rates: interest rates have fallen in 2024 and are expected to continue to do so in 2025. That'll make prices rise further.
Supply: this is the big unknown and it's what the price movements in 2025 will ultimately depend on.
Time to see what happens.
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