Hey, Did anything happen with Bring A Trailer?
Posted by CactusJ@reddit | cars | View on Reddit | 39 comments
I don’t follow it closely, but if I recall BAT posted an obvious AI generated image of a car for sale and all the Reddit users predicted that they would fail miserably, no one wold trust them, etc etc etc.
Did that happen or did it just blow over and become forgotten?
Tuxedo_Muffin@reddit
I don't know what you're referencing. All I do know is that I used to look at BaT a lot when it was pretty new. When the atmosphere changed to high-dollar "ultra rare" (quotations because many weren't) auctions, I lost interest and stopped visiting. I couldn't tell you what it's like now.
c0rbin9@reddit
But there are more low dollar auctions than ever before?
Tuxedo_Muffin@reddit
Are there? I wouldn't know anymore. I stopped visiting.
aprtur@reddit
Man, I miss it being a site for posting obscure enthusiast car listings for people to try to scoop up and get back on the road....something about that reminded me of seeing the classifieds in the back of old car magazines.
Penguinho@reddit
A late-90s Cadillac (real car, with a VIN and a Carfax report) was listed on BaT. The interior photos of the car were clearly manipulated by AI; the car had floor mats made of cobblestone and two gear shifters, among other tells. Speculation was that the seller had asked AI to change the background of the photos and, of course, the AI had fucked with the entire thing. BaT staff embarrassingly failed to catch any of the manipulated photos until people started asking pointed questions in the comments, at which point they cancelled the listed and did some crisis management.
Tuxedo_Muffin@reddit
lol, that's pretty bad. I'm glad I missed it.
alpine240@reddit
Cobblestone floor mats.
GhostofAyabe@reddit
No, it’s still the preferred platform for money laundering via cars.
Bonerchill@reddit
You’re far closer to their ilk than I, but I’ve been in the nine-figure-collector realm for about a decade now.
Money isn’t an object to some of these people. They’ll pay $200k in expedite fees for a $600k restoration if it means they get it four months sooner. Why? Because they want it sooner. Not because there’s a show coming up, not for any real reason other than $200,000 is less than 0.1% of their net worth. And they’re hopelessly underwater on those restorations because they paid top dollar for the car beforehand- but it doesn’t matter because losing a million dollars is meaningless.
They’ll pay a premium to buy a Singer so they don’t have to sit on the wait list. Ditto any restomod. Ditto rare color combos. They want it, they buy it, value isn’t really something they care about.
I get it, though- the money laundering comment is guaranteed upvotes from people who don’t understand that the wealthy play the game completely differently than the have-nots and the have-nots feel better if it’s rigged even more than it actually is.
They don’t need to launder money, their lawyers and accountants make it so they don’t have to. There are plenty of legal ways to avoid and defer and invest.
BrownGhost10@reddit
Benefit of a shit ton of money, people say it’s happiness but it buys a lot time.
StrangeSmellz@reddit
Yes, when you launder money, you should always do it on a really popular site online, where everyone watches, with a 4,000lb chunk of metal that's hard to hide, hard to move, hard to store, with a VIN number that the government and insurance bodies have records for that are tied to companies and people's names.
YES, this is perfect.
DosEquisGuy69@reddit
Have you seen some of the Mecum results? Lol
Nero_Wolff@reddit
What, you dont wanna spend 20m for a yellow enzo? Or nearly 2m for a 360 CS
woodsides@reddit
Have you tried buying an Enzo on the open market nowadays? I have and I can tell you that shit is really wild. 7-8 months ago, I was really close to buying one at price X, but pulled out as I bought something else. Last week I checked to see if it was still available and the owner told me that he had sold it for X+60% after the Mecum auctions. Mint tier Enzos are $15M+ now. There are a few auctions coming up, you'll see.
Forget Enzos, I was really keen on getting a Daytona SP3 and they were going for ~$6.5M before Monterey Auctions in 2025. I thought that was a huge premium (3x, MSRP was $2.1M), so they would probably stay there for a while. Oh boy was I wrong. The specs I like are now trading for north of $10M (TM, Atelier, etc). I know that's true because I placed an offer for $8.5M and got rejected by the owner a few months ago. Same car sold for 10+ recently. I really don't want to pay 8 figures for it right now but it looks like I might have to. That was Zonda money in my mind.
Nero_Wolff@reddit
I mean I obviously havent tried buying an Enzo considering the only car in my flair is a 15 year old bmw lol
As for your point though, that does sound like quite the inflation. Do you have any insights into why this price trend is happening. Ferrari was always the hottest market for cars but 60% increases in under a year seems extreme even for that brand. Is it money laundering across the board like the original comment suggests or something else? Whats with the sudden euphoria for these cars that have been around and well loved for decades?
woodsides@reddit
Lol none of this is money laundering, I don't know where that even came from. I said the same thing in a comment after the mecum auctions in January. It's not just a one-off Mecum result. There have been multiple auctions and private sales conducted by many other auction houses and dealers after Mecum and they were all in line with the results.
themickeymauser@reddit
The money laundering ~~rumor~~ fact comes from capital gains tax being significantly less than income tax, and thats if you even report it, which many don’t.
Not to mention how many of these multi million dollar cars are registered to the owner’s businesses, allowing even more tax write offs.
woodsides@reddit
They have no fucking idea what they're talking about. Try writing off a Supercar as depreciation in your reports and see how well that goes. The IRS will be hounding your ass before you can even turn around and blink.
Unless your car is over 6k lbs, there is no way that you can "write it off", no matter which type of corporate structure you use. It's complete BS which gets sprouted on here. Please try to research about them before spreading misinformation yourself. This is like that "They write it off Jerry" dialogue from Seinfeld.
aprtur@reddit
That auction for all the yellow cars was a charity auction, as well, wasn't it? I know that tends to inflate the results on an auction a decent bit, and that lot was already ripe for crazy prices outside of the specs when many were special serial numbers.
hi_im_bored13@reddit
no mecum is just a piece of shit
aprtur@reddit
I mean, that part isn't too surprising with all the controversy around their auctioneers in recent years. See woodsides comment, though - they intentionally obscured it as a charity auction, but in reality only gave a portion of the proceeds to the foundation when you dive into the T&C.
aprtur@reddit
Just checked again, and it was a charity auction where all proceeds went to the Bachman non profit organization.
woodsides@reddit
No it was not. It was deliberate misinformation by Mecum to make the bidders believe otherwise. The whole Bachman collection was privately purchased by Dana Mecum for $60-70M in 2025 and the cars were auctioned off by Mecum in Jan 2026. All of the proceeds of the auction went to Mecum themselves. The "Charity" caveat was that Dana Mecum apparently donated a sum to the Bachman Foundation at the time of buying the collection from them, so that apparently constitutes this as a "Charity Auction". None, 0% of the proceeds of the auction in Kissimmee went to charity. They obscured this fact in their T&C.
It's just one of the countless slimy things that Mecum does. I always thought of them to not even be in the same stratosphere as RMS/BA/G&C/Bonhams. I hate their auctioning style to the core. It's like they're auctioning cattle and you can't even understand where the current bid is at. I once had one of their assistants on the floor call my bid to $200k over what I agreed for. Absolute madness.
aprtur@reddit
Interesting...I didn't read that deeply into the T&C behind it and had taken it at face value that the proceeds went to the Bachman foundation. That truly is a shitty move on their part. I guess you can pretty up an ugly group of people, but you'll never eliminate them being rotten at the core.
When_hop@reddit
Really? The rear end of the SP3 is so ugly
woodsides@reddit
I think the car looks really good. Best Ferrari design in the last 20 years in my opinion. The market certainly doesn't think it's ugly.
StonedBooty@reddit
To be fair, money doesn’t buy taste. These are “look at my wealth” cars
Maximilianne@reddit
I'm guessing they one you were looking wasn't silver colored ?
Real_Establishment56@reddit
It’s more a game of hot potato with cars nowadays. Last one to buy it for an extortionate amount and can’t sell it on, loses
GoldenState15@reddit
You have no clue what money laundering is
RIP_Soulja_Slim@reddit
Fist time seeing redditors absolutely blow something out of proportion only to have absolutely nothing of note happen in the real world?
flateplane@reddit
Doug you’ve already sold do you really need to be doing this?
Chrodesk@reddit
company shut down, just like reddit after the API changes and discord after age verification. not to mention the annual global depressions, housing crash, in 2020 through 2026.
doomers gonna doom
strongmanass@reddit
Also AI replaced everything. I am an AI account but it would've been too suspicious to call myself strongAIass
Does_Not_Use_Clothes@reddit
I was here for SOPA PIPA and net neutrality. 😞
-Racer-X@reddit
Trust on these sites is definitely the lowest it’s been since they started
RT023@reddit
It’s all about daddy Doug’s site
Penguinho@reddit
It blew over and become forgotten. BAT's head of auctions posted a pretty good statement, and they left the listing up so people could see it. None of it felt like a cover-up. A couple months later there was another scandal involving aftermarket sales of certain Porsche models involving a few high-profile and high-volume BAT sellers, and everybody moved on.
KeyboardGunner@reddit
They removed the auction, apologized, and said they would make changes so it didn't happen again. It was that big of a deal so I don't know what you expect would happen.