Classic Car Sales, Primarily in France (2025)

This dataset contains information on collectible automobiles sold at public auctions in 2025, primarily in France. It includes more than 600 auction lots and was constructed as part of an academic market study in Art Economics. The dataset focuses on vehicles manufactured or first registered before 1995, in order to capture a coherent segment of the collectible car market. The data were collected manually from auction catalogues and published results between September and December 2025. Auctions were identified through La Gazette Drouot and through targeted consultation of the websites and catalogues of major auction houses active in the collectible automobile market, including Christie’s, Sotheby’s, Bonhams, Phillips, and Artcurial. The dataset is not intended to be exhaustive; auctions with insufficient information—particularly missing hammer prices or estimates—were excluded to ensure data quality. For each vehicle, the dataset records core auction and vehicle characteristics, including the year of manufacture, brand, textual lot description, low and high pre-sale estimates, and, when available, the hammer price. Additional metadata include the auction house, sale name, auction dates, lot number, and information on buyer’s fees. When possible, final prices including buyer’s premiums were computed, and all prices are reported in both euros and U.S. dollars. In addition to manual annotation, a large language model was used to extract structured variables from the textual lot descriptions using a standardized, rule-based prompt. This process was limited to information explicitly stated in the catalogues and allowed the extraction of supplementary variables related to vehicle characteristics (e.g., color, engine configuration), administrative information (e.g., registration documents, chassis numbers), and, when mentioned, elements of provenance or condition.