We just returned home from our first visit to Scottsdale’s 2010 Barrett Jackson Collector Car Auction.  What a blast!

This 39th annual event draws massive numbers of people each year.  In fact, we started our adventure in a remote parking lot where a luxury bus shuttled us to the actual event.  You could tell that they had done this before.  The parking/shuttle process was flawless, and surprisingly quick.

Once we entered the main gate we were dumbstruck at the size of this event.  The exhibit hall was the length of six football fields, and held over 350 sponsor and vendor booths.  There was every imaginable gadget, and great quantities of automotive memorabilia, artwork, clothing, watches, and gizmos all designed to tug at the purse strings of adoring automotive collector enthusiasts and wannabees.

As we approached the end of this panoply of automotive wonder, we began to smell the fumes of the classic automobiles.  When we turned the corner to enter the massive auction hall we were greeted by the sound of the auctioneer busily screaming his bids, beautiful women accompanying each car with bulletin boards of vital information, and we found that our hearts quickened just a bit as we witnessed the excitement of this place.

While we stayed to watch the circus of events occurring around us, a charity auction drag racer sold for $250,000, and a 1964 Corvette Convertible went for the “hammer price” of $100,000.  Evidently, in spite of a great recession going on around us,  $84 million dollars has been spent so far at this “world’s greatest collector car auction”.

If you find yourself in Scottsdale, Arizona, during the month of January, I can highly recommend a day at the world famous Scottsdale Barrett Jackson Collector Car Auction.  We had a great time, and look forward to next year’s 40th annual auction.

Here is a slide show with a sampling of my photographs of the event: