The other day I asked you all to give a couple of the newer auction platforms a little love, and this morning an email landed in my inbox that made me smile.

One TDV reader went over to Dutch Auto Auctions after reading the newsletter and ended up buying the 1972 C10 we featured. More importantly, he said he really enjoyed watching the price count down, had a great experience dealing with the seller and came away impressed by the whole process.

I'm certainly not taking any credit for the purchase, but I do love hearing that someone discovered something new through TDV and actually gave it a go.

Want to dive deeper into any of these listings? Just click on the car to take you directly to the listing.

We mostly all love a no-reserve auction, but I particularly love seeing one when the car involved is worth serious money.

There's something I really like about a seller having enough confidence in their car, and hopefully in the way it's been presented, to simply let the market decide what it's worth. Of course, that confidence can turn out to be completely misplaced, which is half the fun for those of us watching from the sidelines.

And here's a little secret that probably isn't much of a secret. Regardless of how much money someone has, nobody likes losing money on a car. So when you're talking about cars worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, taking away the safety net does take some balls.

There are three running at the moment that caught my attention, all for slightly different reasons.

First up is this 1956 Porsche 356A Speedster, which sold in September 2025 for $250,000 and is now back at auction, this time with no reserve.

At the time of writing it's already at $225,000 with four days still to go, but it's the last bid that really caught my attention. It was sitting at $100,000 and then one bidder came along and jumped it straight to $225,000.

Why oh why??

If this were a reserve auction, I could understand the tactic. Throw in a huge bid, flush out everyone else's proxies and perhaps find out pretty quickly where the competition is. But this is no reserve. The car is selling anyway, so why not keep nudging it up and make somebody else show their hand first?

Maybe the bidder thinks $225k plants a flag and scares off anyone who was hoping to steal it. Maybe they've simply entered the maximum they're prepared to pay and don't particularly care what the displayed bid becomes. Or perhaps there's some auction psychology I'm completely missing.

Whatever the reason, voluntarily moving a no-reserve auction from $100k to $225k with four days left is certainly an interesting tactic. If any of our more seasoned bidders can explain the thinking behind that one, I'd genuinely like to hear it.

Then over on Cars & Bids we've got the Porsche 911 Turbo, another seller prepared to take the safety net away on a car where getting the number wrong could become rather expensive.

And this is probably the one I like most for exactly that reason. There's no damage story or unusual circumstance forcing the seller's hand. They've simply got what they believe is a very good car, they've presented it properly and they're backing themselves to get the result.

I like that. It's very easy for me to sit here and say sellers should trust the market. It's slightly different when it's your car, your money and you're watching the clock run down knowing that whatever number is on the screen when it hits zero, you've sold it.

That's when you find out just how confident you really were.

And if those two take some confidence, this 2017 Ford GT on Bring a Trailer takes considerably more.

It's no reserve, it's currently at $600,000, and it's been rear-ended!!

The seller says the car still drives properly and has been very open about the damage, but the pro forma invoices for the parts alone total around $91,000. It needs some rather expensive pieces, including a decklid, rear fascia and spoiler, and some of those parts aren't currently available.

Now that's a no-reserve button I'd have had some difficulty pressing.

A normal Ford GT is one thing. With this one, bidders have to decide what the car is worth damaged, what it'll really cost to repair, how long they'll be waiting for parts and then what a repaired, accident-history Ford GT is worth at the end of it.

And the seller is trusting them to get to a number he's happy with. This one ends today and I’m fascinated to see where its ends up.

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