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Imagine paying $251,033 for a 1991 Acura NSX with 252,200 miles that you're not allowed to drive on the road.

Well, somebody did exactly that on Saturday at Cars & Bids. Admittedly, it was the NSX that Tony Stark drove for what felt like about five seconds in The Avengers, but that's still an extraordinary amount of money for something that's essentially going to spend the rest of its life on display.

Now, before anyone tells me I've missed the point, I do understand this isn't just some modified NSX. Acura's own design team created it for the 2012 film, transforming a very well-used NSX into the rather spectacular red roadster driven briefly by Tony Stark, played by Robert Downey Jr.

And I have to admit, it looks fantastic. It's also a genuine piece of movie history, something that can't simply be recreated by taking an ordinary NSX to a body shop.

But still, $251,033 for a car you can't actually drive! I don’t even get cars that people buy and don’t drive, let alone a car like this, that you can’t actually drive.

The buyer doesn't even get a normal title. The car was sold with a bill of sale and a usage agreement restricting it to stationary display. In other words, this isn't something you can sneak out for an early Sunday morning drive when nobody's looking.

Which got me thinking about something we discuss all the time at The Daily Vroom. We spend an enormous amount of time looking at comparable sales, mileage, condition and previous results, trying to understand what people are paying for particular cars. And for most cars, that's a pretty sensible starting point.

But then something like this comes along and reminds us that people don't always buy with a calculator in their hand. (did you see the weekend results at the live auction houses!)

For the right person, this wasn't a high-mileage Acura NSX. It was Tony Stark's actual movie car, and that connection was clearly worth an enormous amount of money to the bidders.

Would I pay it? Absolutely not. But then I'm not a serious Marvel collector, and perhaps if I were, having this sitting in my garage would mean considerably more to me than owning another perfectly ordinary supercar.

There's also an important wrinkle here. Acura was donating the winning bid proceeds to charity, which makes it difficult to treat the result as a normal market transaction. I'm sure knowing the money was going to a good cause helped create some enthusiasm, although there's no way of knowing how much it influenced the final price.

Which brings me to Cars & Bids, because I think Doug (who’s not really involved day-day, but somehow persuaded Acura) and his team deserve a lot of credit here. Getting Acura itself to consign a genuine movie car was an excellent piece of business, and they made the most of the opportunity. Doug reviewed it, the listing attracted huge attention, the comments were entertaining, and the final result was exactly what any auction platform would hope for.

It's another reminder that getting the right listing can be just as important as having the biggest audience. Sometimes a genuinely unusual car gives people a reason to visit a platform they might otherwise overlook.

And one other thing caught my attention.

The auction ended on a Saturday.

I've been banging the drum for weekend auction endings for a few years now, so naturally I noticed. Cars & Bids has done Saturday auctions for special events before, but regular weekend endings are still not part of its usual routine.

I've never quite understood why the online auction world is so committed to finishing almost everything during the working week. Surely there are plenty of people who would rather spend part of their Saturday watching an interesting auction than trying to follow the final minutes while sitting in a meeting or pretending to work. I’ve done a deep dive a few years back on weekend results vs weekday results and it wasn’t what you expected. I think it’s time for a new one.

Of course, some platforms will tell me they have the data etc… but it comes down to more than that. Weekend auctions mean weekend staffing, something I'm sure nobody at Cars & Bids is particularly excited about.

But I've always thought it would be worth experimenting with properly, rather than reserving weekends for special occasions.

Could this be the beginning of something? I rather doubt it, but I'll happily keep banging that drum until somebody proves me wrong.

As for the NSX, I think this was a terrific result for everyone involved. Acura raised a substantial amount for charity, Cars & Bids delivered a memorable auction, and somebody now owns a one-off piece of automotive and movie history.

Whether they've paid too much is almost impossible to answer, because what do you compare it with? A normal NSX certainly isn't the answer, and another Tony Stark movie car isn't exactly waiting around the corner.

It's a good example of something that's easy to forget when we're all studying auction results. A car can have one price as a machine and a completely different price as a piece of history. Sometimes the story is what people really want to own.

I just hope the new owner has somewhere suitably impressive to display it. Spending a quarter of a million dollars on a car you can't drive is one thing. Having to explain to visitors why it's sitting in the corner gathering dust would be quite another.

And congratulations to Cars & Bids. This is exactly the sort of listing every auction platform would love to have.

There's a rather lovely 1995 BMW M3 currently up for auction on Bring a Trailer. Cosmos Black Metallic, manual gearbox, just 28,000 miles and those wonderful Vader seats. Exactly the sort of E36 M3 that gets people excited, and I can see why.

But there's something about this particular car that I find considerably more interesting than its specification.

It's already sold at auction twice.

In August 2023, it sold at Bonhams for $72,800. Then in October 2025, it appeared at Broad Arrow, where it sold for $53,200. Now, barely a year later, it's back on Bring a Trailer with just 393 additional miles.

That's nearly $20,000 between its two previous sale prices, and we're about to find out what somebody is prepared to pay for it a third time.

Now here's my question. If you'd discovered this car while browsing Bring a Trailer, would you have known about either of those previous sales?

Because neither happened on BaT. Both took place at traditional auction houses, and unless you already knew the car's history or went looking for it elsewhere, you could easily miss them.

And this is exactly one of the reasons we built GoAskSam.

Rather than visiting one auction platform and seeing only what's listed there, GoAskSam lets you search across multiple auction platforms in one place.

When this M3 appears in your results, you'll notice a little 'Sold before' label. Click it, and there they are. Both previous transactions, the auction houses, dates and prices, with links to the original listings.

Sam even points out that the car has returned with just 393 more miles since its last sale.

Does that mean there's something wrong with it? Absolutely not. But I'd certainly want to know that it sold for $72,800 in 2023 and $53,200 in 2025 before deciding how much I was prepared to bid.

And here's the important bit. We're not just tracking Bring a Trailer, Cars & Bids and the other online platforms. We're also tracking sales and listings from traditional auction houses, including Bonhams and Broad Arrow.

A car doesn't suddenly acquire a new history just because it moves from a live auction house to an online platform. Yet that's often how we end up researching them, one auction site at a time.

Take this 2018 Porsche Panamera Turbo S E-Hybrid, another car currently listed on Bring a Trailer.

It's a rather serious machine, with 680 horsepower, 57,000 miles and a specification that would have cost its first owner a small fortune.

But GoAskSam reveals something worth knowing. In September, this very car was offered on Cars & Bids, where bidding reached $58,000 without a sale.

Now it's back, this time on BaT.

There's also a title issue worth understanding. The Carfax report shows a Not Actual Mileage title issued in July 2026. The seller says this resulted from a paperwork error during a family transfer and that a corrected title has since been issued.

Whether that affected the earlier bidding, I don't know. But between the unsuccessful auction and the title history, there's quite a bit to investigate before deciding what to bid.

And remember, that $58,000 wasn't a sale price. It was a high bid on a car that didn't sell. There's a very important difference.

Something else we've built into GoAskSam, which I haven't really talked about much yet, is Auction History.

When we recognize a car that's previously appeared at auction, whether it sold or not, you can open a page bringing its recorded auction appearances together.

For the Panamera, you can see its previous Cars & Bids appearance, the unsuccessful $58,000 bid and its current Bring a Trailer listing.

But there's more.

Below that, we show what other examples of the same model have actually sold for. In this case, we've identified 10 completed sales since December 2023, ranging from $67,500 to $119,000, with a typical middle range of $75,500 to $98,000.

And rather than giving you those numbers and expecting you to believe us, you can examine every individual sale behind the range, including the mileage, date, auction platform and original source.

There’s something else worth mentioning. When a model’s market changes meaningfully with mileage, Sam splits the sales into bands.

For this M3 that means under 50k miles, 50k to 100k, and over 100k, each with its own range and the actual sales behind it.

Pick the under-50k band and you’ll see four cars sold since last November, from $46,750 at 32k miles to $90,000 at 3,600.

No need to lump a low-mileage collector example together with something that’s covered three times the distance.

We've spent a fair bit of time since launching GoAskSam talking about how you can simply speak into your phone and search across multiple auction platforms. And I still think that's one of the most enjoyable parts of it.

But finding the car is really just the beginning.

If you're thinking of spending $20k, $50k or even $100k or considerably more on something, wouldn't you want to know whether that exact car has already been through auction? Whether it sold, what it brought, or whether somebody previously turned down the highest bid?

And wouldn't you also want to see what genuinely comparable examples have sold for, rather than relying on one number somebody has decided represents the market?

That's what we're trying to bring together.

Of course, we're still in beta, and we don't have a complete record of every car that's ever appeared at auction. Some histories will be incomplete, and sometimes there won't be enough reliable sales to give you a meaningful comparison.

But when the evidence is there, we'll show it.

And I think this BMW M3 is a perfect example of why that matters. Three auction appearances, three different venues, and a history that becomes considerably more interesting once you put it all together.

So next time you're looking at a car on Bring a Trailer, Cars & Bids or anywhere else, why not start by searching for it on GoAskSam?

You might find the car you want. You might also discover something about it you never knew.

Find the car. See its history. Check the real sales. It's all free on GoAskSam.