The man with the gavel in his hand started the auction at $10 million. The first bid was $16 million. I was now confused and worried. I had started Saturday morning with the scrumptious breakfast buffet at Jacks Restaurant and Lounge at the Portola Hotel and Spa complete with bottomless mimosas. This was clearly a mistake given it was now nighttime.
The Portola is meant to be a short walk from the Monterey Conference Centre where RM Auctions were busy selling 120 cars for $140 million. Of course the top 20 sellers were mainly Ferraris and Mercedes with the Jaguar D Type I had my not very steady eye on selling for $4.3 million.
Now while I did expect lingerie direct mail millionaire Eddie Smith’s 1967 Ferrari 275 GTB/4S NART Spider to sell for around $35 million, bidding in $6 million lots was a bit different to last week’s Pickle’s prestige car auction at Belmore in Sydney’s west where I had been training. But another rag trader, Canada’s Lawrence Stroll wasn’t going to let this one of four Spiders go. Larry owns 20 Ferraris, his own race track and $2 billion.
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