Gooding & Company Making It to Its 10th Year!

"Unlike much art, these are three-dimensional objects. You can sit in them, touch them. You can fire them up and hear their sounds. People really get emotional about cars." 

-D. Gooding

 David Gooding, founder of the auction house Gooding & Company, had an interest in classic cars at a young age. As a young man he picked up on classic car culture through his father and uncle, both car fanatics. In recent years his knowledge in the fields of economics, auctioning, and automotive has served him well; data from 2011 reveals that his company sold 297 collectible cars at an average of $441,218 each that very year. Doing the math, that equates to about 130 million dollars! For each car the company receives and sells, it is granted 10% commission from the prior seller, and another 10% from the buyer (which covers the worldwide advertising for the car and some of the auctioning event costs). What a payoff!

“The auction process is such a good way to get the maximum number of people to view your object and to bid the price up, especially for hard-to-value cars,” says Gooding.

Prior to founding Gooding & Co., Gooding had served three years as president for RM Auction— an auction house that is now one of his close-neck competitors. Both auction houses will be featured at Monterey Car Week this month. Saturday, the 16th should be a heated day as both companies are scheduled to auction off automobiles. Whereas RM Auction has a 1967 Ferrari 275 GTB/4 NART Spider estimated to be sold between $14 million to $17 million, Gooding & Co. has 37 cars with pre-sale estimates over $1 million each (with some potentially reaching past $10 million).

Some of the hottest of 160 cars Gooding & Co. will showcase include a few Bugattis, 22 Ferraris, and 12 Porches. Two of the highest-selling Porsches to be up for auction are the 1956 Porsche 356 1500 GS Carrera Speedster ($800,000 - $1,000,000) and the 1964 Porsche 904 Carrera GTS ($1,750,000 - $2,250,000).

Astonished by the success of his company, Gooding remarks, “Even we are surprised these days by what people are willing to pay for some of these cars […] The company has exceeded all of my expectations in every way. It’s just been a wonderful, wild ride."

This year the company celebrates their 10th year anniversary at Pebble Beach. For its tenth year, things are looking mighty bright. A wild ride, indeed, is the progress of Gooding’s auction house, as forecasts say Gooding & Company is yet to reach its peak! 

Credits

http://articles.latimes.com/2012/apr/08/business/la-fi-himi-gooding-20120408

http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-autos-gooding-pebble-beach-highlights-20130731,0,5054048.photogallery?index=la-fi-hy-autos-milliondollar-highlights-of-the-011

http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-autos-gooding-pebble-beach-auction-preview20130801,0,4518205.story