If you told me this five years ago I would know you were a liar.  But it is happening.  The 17545 sold 33% of the cars that were offered for the second week in a row.  2,100 sold out of 6346 registered.  The world is surely coming to an end.  Or at least as we knew it.  Dealer consignors sold in the twenties.  That doesn’t work.  It kills the will to take a chance.  It’s negative momentum.  It makes a buyer feel like a dumb-ass for bidding and second guessing himself.  I see people double looking at their slips to be sure they haven’t missed anything… a year… an extra 50,000 miles… a frame announcement.

The days of 10,000 units and traffic jams backed up all the way down to my old shop are history.  You walk in the building and feel like you are in church, a funeral home, and a dentist office all at once.  It was so quite there today a dealer called me laughing his balls off telling me he heard me screaming in lane 22 as he walked out of the office lobby into the lanes.  Now for you cats that are not familiar with the 17545 building, that is about 200 meters away and through 22 lanes of a live auction.  I know I get caught up in the action once in a while, but dag, that is off the scope.

We did have a miny disaster this week with a little rain, but that is a sissies excuse for why you ain’t selling or buying cars.  You have to dig in, smear some chaulk on the bat, spit in your palms, pull your lid down tight, and rumble.   I sold 84% which is low for me, and thank God for simulcast and some good out-of-towners that are buying careful, but relatively deep.

Hate me or love me there are two things that are not up for debate.  I am selling on today’s market, with no exceptions and I will have more cars fat cars in my lanes than any auction in the country.   It don’t matter rain, hot , cold, stock crash, snow, hail, mother died, new managers, new COOs of Manheim, OVE listings on your car on simulcast, fees gone up, post-sale blows up deals, CRs that ruin your cars, can’t get CRs done, Crs that are two points higher on lease accounts than ours, flip flopping auctioneers, one lane clerk when you have to have two for simulcast, being accused of using motor honey in cars when that Tomfoolery went out of style in the 70s, or God hitting us with 100 year storms…….I am selling, and I’ll be back with 700 more, every week, until I die, Amen.

If you ain’t got ‘em you ain’t gonna sell ‘em.  So knock me your lobes and let me rap to you, if I’m all you got, I’m all you need.  Show up in my lanes and a make you one promise, if you bidding, you buying.  Come from Texas, come from Colorado, come from simulcast and you will have cars on Saturday to sell, not dopey stories about how you got no-saled at the 17545.  Oh no.  Buy them right or buy them wrong, but buy them you will if you hang out with me in my lanes.  This is not practice.  This ain’t no contest to see who can trick people into paying too much on every car.

Shalom, hasta luego, chow, check you next week.

The self-appointed, often disputed (by nit-wits), statistically undeniable, Maestro of Manheim

Robert Hollenshead