The auction results at Retromobile this year were nothing short of astounding.
The main focus was in the neglected car collection of Roger Baillon, who owned a transport business in France. Baillon’s business did well after the Second World War, allowing him buy a farm property and classic cars, hoping to turn the farm into an automobile museum. But alas, Baillon’s business declined in the 1970’s and he was forced to sell much of his collection. Ballion died about 10 years ago and left the 60 remaining cars in his collection to his son, Jacques. Jacques died last year and passed the cars to Ballion’s grandchildren, who initially had no idea of the extent of the collection or the value; That is until they went under the hammer last Friday at the Artcurial auction and sold for a total of €47,200,144.
His 1961 Ferrari 250 GT California Spider alone set a sales record for California Spiders – becoming the fifth most-expensive car ever sold at action – when it fetched €16,288,000. All the other cars, fetched crazy high prices considering virtually all of them were in need of total restoration. You can see all of them here:
https://lautomobileancienne.com/resultat-vente-artcurial-collection-roger-baillon/
In the collection was a 1924 Citroën Type C 5 HP torpédo trèfle. It sold for €23,840, a hefty premium over any price paid to date for an really Citroën of this type. And there were three other notable sales of Citroens we recently featured:
• a 1937 Traction 11B Cabriolet, claimed to be owned by Citroën’s most famous engineer, André Lefebvre, sold for €107,280. Oddly this one was in very nice condition and did not command a premium price given its history of ownership.
• a 1989 CX Honecker limousine by Nilsson in “like new” condition fetched an astonishing €95,360. Surely a record to date for any CX.
