A few weeks back marked my 12th anniversary as a full-time employee here at Hemmings. No standing ovations, please. It’s not that big of a deal around here, but if I write another one of these columns in 30 years, then I might reconsider.
I still feel like the new guy among the great group of people we have in Bennington, and increasingly in locations around the country. We’ve had some people pass through the doors of 222 Main Street every morning for 20, 30 and even 40 years or more. It’s a testament to the durability of the company and the hobby we love to serve. And, yeah, maybe a little Yankee work ethic thrown in for good measure.
I showed up in Bennington exactly one week after Hurricane Irene had absolutely ravaged the
Green Mountain State. Just about every river, creek or stream in a state filled with rivers, creeks, and streams, had flooded. Roads had washed out and the damage was so extensive that some communities remained cut off for days after the storm.
Even with the widespread damage throughout the region, Hemmings did not miss a beat. That same sense of community that had Vermonters helping each other out and rebuilding before any official help arrived was alive and well at Hemmings. Our top-notch customer service team was on the phones, renewing subscriptions, placing ads, selling merch. Our editorial team was still going on the road, meeting car owners, taking photos and writing stories. I jumped right into that mix as an associate editor, eager to tell those stories with words and pictures.
But nothing sits still in this world. At least nothing that wants to survive—or thrive, as Hemmings has done for nearly 70 years. As the business of buying and selling cars has increasingly become a digital one, we launched Hemmings Auctions in 2019. I was asked to serve as the auctions editor, helping to define the style of our vehicle listings and working to ensure that they were as accurate as possible. Two years later, I was given the opportunity to run the program as the director of operations.
Online auctions have been around since the dawn of the consumer internet, but at Hemmings Auctions, we have taken something cold, impersonal and distant and made it very personal. When you submit a car for auction, you get assigned an actual, live human being who will stay with you the whole way. They even have phone numbers in case you need to talk to them. Try calling the other guys!
One of our primary goals with Hemmings Auctions, and really the only way to achieve the success we are looking for, is to build trust. We need to give our customers confidence that what they are bidding on is what they will get, and we need to give our sellers confidence that the guy doing the bidding actually exists and is going to follow through when the auction ends. Thanks to a very dedicated and hardworking team at Hemmings Auctions, I think we’ve built something pretty special in the past few years.
But let’s get back to the notion of not sitting still. As much as I have enjoyed working with our auction team and our customers, my true calling is telling stories, and mostly true ones at that. Mostly.
Armed with the intimate knowledge of running a collector car auction, I am returning to the Hemmings editorial team as the marketplace editor. What does a marketplace editor do? The stories I plan on telling are designed to help you navigate the modern world of buying and selling a collector car. I’ve learned a great deal from car collectors these past few years and it’s time to share that with you.
We’re going to dive deep into the data, not just trusting our gut, but looking at the hard numbers to know what the market is telling us. We’re going to share with you the trends we see, the bright spots, the warning signs—all of it. Part of that building trust with our buyers and sellers in the Hemmings Marketplace includes giving an honest assessment of the market.
I can’t say where Hemmings will be in another dozen years, but for now I will be right here, sharing every bit of advice and knowledge I have of what’s going on in the collector car market.
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