McCormick Auctions, Palm Springs
McCormick Auctions of Palm Springs, California, has been running two auctions a year since the mid-1980s, and shows no sign of slowing down. The sale held November 22-24 was the 67th of the house’s storied career.
Free champagne at a car auction may seem to be a cynical (if cost-effective) way to loosen up the bidders’ grips on their wallets, but the Mumm’s bidder reception seems to have worked. Of the 522 car lots registered for sale, 330 sold for a 65-percent sell-through rate, and a total of $5.74 million was taken in.
The top sale was a CSX400-series 1966 Shelby Cobra for $153,700; another Shelby, a ’68 GT500 convertible, sold for $127,200; and a split-window ’63 Corvette sold for $89,040. Also worth noting: A ’61 Cadillac Coupe de Ville owned and customized by Danny “The Count” Koker, star of the History Channel cable-TV show Counting Cars, sold for $63,000. The restoration and sale of the Cadillac will be airing on the show about the time you read this.
Better still, it put us in Palm Springs, playground of the Rat Pack, just days before Thanksgiving. Elsewhere that means winter coats and mittens, but in Palm Springs it means shirtsleeves and shorts. (Even flip-flops.) Is the McCormick event a last gasp before the holidays intrude and call a halt to the season’s auction festivities? Is it a bookend to the auction season, a last-chance blush at reality before the madness of Scottsdale overwhelms us? Is it an opportunity to see some cars and trucks that you wouldn’t get to see otherwise? Yes, yes, and yes. And frankly, it’s an opportunity to see some items that you will see in Scottsdale — more than a couple of cars seen here migrated to Arizona just a couple
