The young man in the car is holding a bidder’s paddle and talking with his hands. “I love the auctions,” he says. “They’re energetic and there’s so many people in the room. They’re unpredictable and you never know what’s gonna happen.” Then he says where the car is headed and why: “Join us in the Portola Hotel to see if we can win a P1 GT.”
The video was posted by @supercar_ron under the caption “WHAT HAPPENS IN MONTEREY,” and a title stays on screen for all of its two minutes and 41 seconds: “WINNING A P1 GT AT AUCTION IN MONTEREY.” The title gives away the result. The video is about how close it felt.
@supercar_ron
On the auction floor, one of the group unfolds the printed run list. “Here are the lots that are going through before the P1 GT,” the narration says, and the plan is spelled out with it. “Luckily, there’s a lot of heat to get the room excited, get a lot of people’s excitement out of the way, and then hopefully the P1 GT goes for the low.” In other words, they want the room to spend its energy on the cars that come first.
The McLaren appears next, dark bodywork and a louvered front fender visible over the heads of a packed crowd. The reaction from the seats is immediate: “Oh my gosh, it’s so sick.” The group has a slogan for the evening as well. “We have the power of friendship,” one of them says. “Power of love and friendship. It goes a long way.”
Then the bidding opens, and they do nothing. “We’re gonna let it simmer,” the narrator says. “So far, we’re liking how it’s going.” A few seconds later: “Slow, simmer, simmer. We’re not in yet.” The young man in the green and cream jacket sits in the middle of the room, watching other people bid.
The number climbs. “We’re at 2.75,” the narration reports, then “2.8 million.” That is the moment the paddle goes up. He lifts it high over his head, and the voice on the video says, “We’re in.”
What follows is the longest stretch of the video. He looks around the room and says, “Everybody’s looking at me like I have money. I don’t.” The auctioneer does not drop the hammer. The group gets louder. “What is happening? What is going on?” Then, more than once: “Sell the car!” The bidder has a hand pressed to his mouth.
The auctioneer’s count can be read in the transcript. “Going once.” “Going twice at 2.8 million.” “And going for the third, the final time, at 2.8 million.”
It does not end there. The next lines are groans. “That was ridiculous. Come on. Listen, we have a ceiling here.” A shot of the stage shows the board for lot 237 reading $2,850,000, above the figure the auctioneer had been calling. “Thanks for the bump, bro,” one of the friends says.
Seconds later the mood flips completely. The friends are grabbing the bidder by the shoulders and shouting “Let’s go!” and “The W!” The slogan comes back, twice: “The power of friendship.” Away from the seats the celebration carries on, and one of them admits how unsure he was at the end. “I was like, should I go? That was insane.”
The last scene adds a twist. “We should probably call Ron and tell him,” someone says, using the name on the account that posted the video. The answer is no. A phone screen shows a text from him asking, “We going $3.1?” The narrator explains that Ron is somewhere with no phone service and the messages are going by satellite. “Little does he know,” he says. The video ends on the street outside, with two of the friends grinning at the camera.
The video does not give a final price beyond what the board shows, and it does not say how the purchase is being split or paid for. What it does show, in order, is a method.
They set a ceiling before they sat down. “We have a ceiling here” is said in frustration, but it is the most useful sentence in the video. An auction room is loud, fast and public, and the only number that protects a bidder is one decided in advance. Agree on it with everyone involved before the sale starts, not by text message while the lot is on the block.
They watched the earlier lots. Reading the run list and sitting through the cars before yours shows how the room is behaving that day, whether lots are clearing their estimates and how quickly the auctioneer moves.
They waited. Letting it simmer means not helping to push the price up in the opening rounds. It does not guarantee a bargain, and the board here moved past the number they came in at, but it keeps a bidder from running up the price on himself.
Anyone new to this should also know two things the clip does not cover. Bidders have to register with the auction house before they are handed a paddle, and for expensive lots that involves showing they can pay. And the hammer price is not the bill. Auction houses add a buyer’s premium on top, so read the terms and build that percentage into the ceiling before the first bid.
One more habit is worth taking from the young man with the paddle. He went in excited and said so, and he still sat on his hands until the bidding reached 2.8 million.