Lots of auctions are going on during auction week in Phoenix. Barrett-Jackson and Russo and Steele are the biggest but Gooding is pretty big, too. They tend to have more high end and European cars but they had a couple of Mopars. Of course we had to check them out…
One Mopar was a 1970 Dodge Charger R/T. Was not so impressed with this car as it was missing its fender tag and was a 440-4 car. It is a 4-speed car though. Auction estimate was $80-100k!
Here are some highlights from the Russo and Steele auction from the Wednesday preview.
This is a 1970 Hemi Superbird and probably the best Mopar at Russo.
Tuesday is normally not a super exciting day at Barrett-Jackson, but since Barrett was selling the majority of the Ron Pratte collection that night, the room was full and the bidding was crazy. Ron is a big time collector in the Phoenix area and had been buying high end cars at Barrett-Jackson for years. He decided to liquidate his collection through BJ and it was very fun to watch. This included two Hemi Mopars that did very well. The first car up was a 1970 Dodge Charger with a 426 Hemi and a 4-speed. Bidding was furious and shot up to $190,000 right away–unseen levels for a Hemi B-Body. It ended up at $200,000. Here is a picture of the car:
Mopar Blog is down at the Arizona auctions again this year and will be posting photos and updates throughout the week. Here are a couple of cars we thought were cool at Barrett-Jackson so far.
This is a factory FY1 bright yellow paint wagon and it went across the block today. It went for $5700, you can still find bargains at Barrett!
The Charles Kee Estate Sale was May 8th and 9th in Brothers, Oregon and it was a blast to attend. They had 1000 boxes of parts for sale and 200 cars, most of it Mopar! I was there from the front lines bidding and buying parts along with a bunch of other Mopar fanatics. The cars ended up going for pretty cheap, most at not much more than scrap prices with a few exceptions. The parts were a little more expensive but lots of treasures were to be found in the hundreds and hundreds of banana boxes that Charles Kee used to store stuff. It is hard to show the scale of how many parts were here but we tried with this picture.
The Charles Kee auction starts tomorrow! They just posted the complete catalog today, take a look.
The next car we are featuring is a 1965 Plymouth Barracuda, VIN number V852527557. It is a factory 273 4 bbl commando V8 automatic car with a floor shifter. A 4 bbl in one of these is pretty rare. This Cuda is very clean and is a loaded model. We see power brakes, floor shift auto, bucket seats, chrome air cleaner, black valve covers, wood grain wheel and the top of the line hub caps. It has silver exterior with black interior and black stripes.
The next car we are featuring looks like it was one of Charles Kee’s personal cars he wanted to keep. It is a 1962 Chrysler 300 2-door with a big block engine. This is a really nice car, and like many others, Charles Kee put blankets over the dash and seats to preserve them from the desert sun.
Miss our last post on the Kee collection? James G. Murphy will hold the estate sale of Charles Kee on May 8 and 9 in Brothers, Oregon. Charles has a huge collection of Mopar cars and parts and we got the opportunity to go out and look at some of the stuff. Read more about the 1966 Chrysler Newport in this collection after the jump! (We want to apologize that some of the pictures in this post are not very good–it was 35 degrees and raining with a 30 MPH wind when we took these, our camera got some water on it a few times).
Did you want to go to the Lambrecht collection auction but live in the Northwest? Did you want to go but are only a Mopar fan? Well, here is your chance. The Charles Kee collection is going up for auction on May 8th and 9th in Brothers, Oregon. Where is Brothers, you ask? It’s in the middle of nowhere in Eastern Oregon, about an hour east of Bend, Oregon. It was a five hour drive for us from Olympia, Washington. Charles Kee was collecting cars to try to start a museum but unfortunately passed away before seeing his dreams come true.
This is an amazing collection of cars and parts but unfortunately a few years ago some Europeans came in and bought a bunch of the better cars from the collection. Most of what are left are C-bodies and 4-door Chryslers with a few scattered B- and A-bodies. Still some good projects in the bunch, however.
We got the opportunity to see the collection and have the scoop on the cars and parts that are going up for auction. Here are some general pictures and we are going to have more details on a few of the best cars. The auction is being run by James G. Murphy–here is a link to the preliminary catalog. Anyone want more info on any cars in particular?
We just attended the Mopar Spring Fling car show on April 5th and 6th in Van Nuys, California. It was an awesome show as usual with a ton of parts and cars to see–it really is the biggest and best car show and swap west of the Mississippi. More pics after the jump!
