Shopping online is an everyday reality, so it’s hardly noteworthy that Dr. Parviz Soomekh was browsing an internet auction site late last year. However, on that day, Dr. Soomekh wasn’t shopping for household necessities but rather searching for a sports car. His web visit rose to the level of remarkable only when he submitted his bid for a vintage Porsche that he had never driven and never seen.
All told, he spent $998,550 and $3,600 in shipping charges for a 1992 Porsche 911 Targa extensively modified by Singer Vehicle Design. In essence, it was a used car — with all the potential pitfalls that connotes.
Even so, Dr. Soomekh, 48, who operates a group of anesthesia centers in the New York area, had little concern about making the seven-figure commitment. His garage holds other cars in that lofty price range, and past experience gave him confidence in the online platform, duPont Registry Live.
He’s not the only buyer extending that level of trust: Last month, a Ferrari Enzo wearing special Rosso Dino paint sold for $13 million on the same platform.
For the multitudes of shoppers who’d never consider buying any car without an in-person inspection and a test drive, a purchase like Dr. Soomekh’s might be unthinkable. Yet it turns out that transactions like this — cars costing a million dollars and up — from virtual showrooms aren’t all that rare. On the Bring a Trailer website, the dominant online marketplace for collector cars, 77 auctions closed for a million dollars or more in 2025. That’s a fraction of the site’s 49,486 auctions of all types for the year, but a healthy contribution to the site’s 2025 sales of $1.7 billion.
More cars are auctioned online today than through in-person events. Prominent Bring a Trailer sellers say that transactions in the million-dollar range, like the bulk of sales on the site, are typically completed without the buyer ever having sat in or laid eyes on the car. A bidder can arrange for an independent inspection before the auction closes, but the basis for seriously considering any offering usually boils down to the description and photos. With habits developed during the restrictions of Covid’s darkest days, keyboard shopping is now an unexceptional routine.
The vehicles that draw seven-figure bids largely reflect demographic changes and the shift in wealth distribution of recent years. John Wiley, director of valuation analytics at Hagerty, a collector car insurer, wrote in a 2025 market summary that the average model year of million-dollar cars was trending newer. A third of the vehicles sold online last year were built in the past decade.
The frothy market for modern supercars has continued into 2026, Mr. Wiley said, with the high valuations of artificial intelligence stocks fueling the car market, especially among younger buyers.
“The key attractions for these buyers are very low miles and less-seen paint colors. Cars showing a hundred miles or a thousand miles are very desirable, and if it’s a low-volume Porsche model in a factory paint-to-sample color, it may bring double or triple what a popular finish would,” he said referring to a custom color.
Sales of blue-chip classics from the 1930s in the million-dollar category don’t grab as many headlines. Almost three-quarters of seven-figure online sales are vehicles newer than 1980, Mr. Wiley said.
But Mark Hyman, a St. Louis vintage car dealer, said the market for older models remained healthy. Marketing classics requires a different approach, largely because newer vehicles are easier to quantify.
“You know what you are buying in that segment,” he said of late-model cars. “You’ve got a window sticker and service records, so you know what you’re getting. With a Duesenberg or a Packard it’s more complex. You need the history and the expertise” of a reputable seller whom you trust.
That distinction shines a bright light on the wide range of possible interpretations for what the term “online” means. Buying through the website of an established dealer would be the closest equivalent of a traditional in-person transaction. One step away is buying via the online sales of conventional auction houses — RM Sotheby’s or Bonhams, for instance — which often enable online bidding for in-person sales.
Then there are operations like duPont Registry Live, which sells only online, but maintains a physical location to inspect and vet cars for auction. Its focus is the high end of the market — a concierge experience, said Antoine Tessier, the chief executive of the duPont Registry Group, which includes transportation and escrow services.
“All duPont Registry Live auctions are no reserve, so our sellers have a 100 percent sales certainty,” he said. “And buyers are protected by a money-back guarantee.”
Another variation is the model popularized by Bring a Trailer, which hosts auctions on its platform, sorts out sale details and provides marketing reach, but does not bring the cars in-house.
Each business model has attractions suited to different types of buyers. Still, there’s little question that the structure employed by Bring a Trailer and its competitors holds broad appeal. Despite serving a more limited role than hands-on dealers, these destination sites, where daily window-shopping is perilously habit forming, still attract plenty of oligarch-level offerings.
There are several reasons for this, but the one most often cited by customers is their trust in sellers who have a reputation for presenting comprehensive documentation, are responsive to questions in the comments section and provide extensive photographs (often running into the hundreds) as well as videos of the cars driving.
That combination of supporting materials gave Kurt Uzbay, managing director at Janney Montgomery Scott in Hauppauge, N.Y., the reassurance to bid on a 1969 Ferrari 365 GTC on Bring a Trailer. The site’s listing carried more than 250 photographs, and the documentation included a Ferrari Classiche certification of authenticity from carmaker, making the $760,000 closing price a well-considered purchase, Mr. Uzbay said.
In a collection that totals more than a dozen vehicles, mostly bought sight-unseen, Mr. Uzbay has an AC Cobra, vintage racecars, a quartet of Jaguars and a late model Ferrari. The 365 GTC was offered by 1600 Veloce, an automotive marketing company and prolific seller on Bring a Trailer.
“Bidding online is more rational than a live auction,” Mr. Uzbay said. “It’s not emotional. You have seven or more days to consider the pictures, the receipts and the commentary offered,” referring to the many remarks that Bring a Trailer auctions can attract from casual observers and qualified experts. It’s unlikely he would have gotten a better feel for the car in the swirl of activity at a conventional raised-paddle auction.
Anthony Serra, president of 1600 Veloce, sees advantages in online buying from a somewhat different angle, not least of which is the limit on the buyer’s fee, which is capped at $7,500. For a $1 million car sold at an RM Sotheby’s in-person auction, the buyer’s premium would come to $105,000.
“Everything we sell, we touch,” Mr. Serra said, emphasizing the benefits of 1600 Veloce’s process of bringing all sale cars to its North Salem, N.Y., location. There the staff can do studio photography, prepare the car for sale and ensure that items like the tool kit and owner’s manual are present.
Buying from a widely recognized, reputable seller can mean paying more; Mr. Uzbay estimates the premium for the peace of mind to be 10 percent to 15 percent. Still, the rigorous process seems to be working well for 1600 Veloce: Among its recent sales on Bring a Trailer was the July auction of a 1985 Ferrari 288 GTO for $6.8 million, a record price for the platform.
The downsides of buying a car lacking full disclosure surface before long, even among cars that bring stratospheric prices at established in-person auctions, said Greg Stanley, author of “The Enthusiast’s Guide to Collector Cars” and host of a podcast on the same topic. “That’s brought a new line of business to restoration shops — correcting the shortcomings discovered after delivery. It’s not unheard for cars to go in for fixes before they go to the new owner.”
That’s why even the most seasoned collectors make sure to learn everything about the cars they’re considering.
Bruce Meyer, a board member of the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles, had no concerns about buying a Porsche racecar online in April. The winning bid, on Bring a Trailer, was exactly $1 million, but the car was one Mr. Meyer already had gained deep knowledge of.
His advice, accrued through years of experience, is succinct: “Do your homework.”