Bruce Weiner Micro Car auction: Day two wrap and results

With the crowd shuffling out of the Bruce Weiner Micro Car Museum after day one of RM's sale, Autoweek contributor Dave Kinney looked over to RM's Ian Kelleher and complimented him on a strong first day. Kelleher smirked and said that he expected that day two would be even better. He was right.

A general rule of car auctions—and probably other auctions—is that the items that are expected to sell for the most are usually scheduled to cross the block late in the auction. So, Kelleher's prediction wasn't all that bold. But had he said that the second day of the sale would push the total for the weekend over the $9 million mark, it would have been both bold and correct.

Now, for a little context we should recall that RM sold a GT40 for $11 million last year in Monterey. In January, Gooding and Company sold 101 cars for a total of $52.6 million at its sale in Scottsdale. In the current collector car auction landscape $9.1 million isn't all that much money, especially when it's spread out over 484 lots.

That said, many of the prices realized at RM's sale seemed crazy. Micro cars haven't exactly been the brightest stars of the auction scene in the past. They've been bringing increasingly large amounts of money over the last few years, but it wasn't long ago that they were overlooked by the vast majority of mainstream collectors. Last weekend saw record after record shattered. People who have been collecting micro cars for years were shaking their heads in disbelief as cars doubled and tripled their presale estimates.

As mentioned in a previous post, the Weiner sale was kind of a perfect storm in that just about everyone with money and a keen interest in tiny cars likely had a bidder pass. So, we shouldn't necessarily expect to see these kinds of results duplicated anytime soon. But we will probably see a bump in micro car values and the RM sale has likely pushed the oddballs a lot closer to the mainstream.

The top twelve results are listed below. Click here for all the results from RM.

1. 1958 F.M.R Tg 500 “Tiger” - $322,000

2. 1951 Reyonnah - $184,000

3. 1958 Goggomobil TL-400 Transporter “PEZ” - $172,500

4. 1955 Inter 175A Berline - $161,000

5. 1959 Goggomobil TL-400 Transporter Pickup “Coca-Cola” - $138,000

6. 1963 Goggomobil TL-250 Transporter “Dubble Bubble” - $132,250

7. 1955 Fuji Cabin - $126,500

8. 1964 Peel P50 - $120,750

9. 1955 Messerschmitt KR 200 “Vic Hyde” - $115,000

10. 1957 Messerschmitt KR 201 Roadster - $103,500

11. 1966 Peel Trident - $103, 500

12. 1957 Jurisch Motoplan Prototype - $103,500

By Rory Carroll