How Mecum Pulled off a Live Auction During the Pandemic
The state of Nevada reported its first death from COVID-19 on March 16th, 2020. The very next day, Governor Sisolak ordered all non-essential businesses to close immediately. This was a problem for the casinos, a big problem. These are places that never close, in fact, they don’t even have locks on their doors. There was only one time in history that Nevada’s casinos had closed, and that was when Kennedy was assassinated in 1963. But this was different; it wasn’t just for one day, or even one week. This closure would be measured in months, but how many? Nobody knew for sure. The casinos were forced to quickly evict their guests, mothball their operations and find a way secure their properties.
It was a weird time. The Strip became deserted, like something out of a dystopian sci-fi movie. The majority of Las Vegas residents work in the gaming industry, and the pressure to get the casinos reopened was immense. Sisolak finally relented on June 4th, 2020 but he included a raft of strict rules and protocols that had to be followed or he would snap his fingers and shut it all down again.
Mecum Auctions traditionally holds their Las Vegas car sale in October or November at the convention center. I go every year, and this year I actually had a car that I wanted to consign, but obviously this was no ordinary year. During those early months of the pandemic, Mecum’s website simply listed “TBD” as the auction date for Las Vegas, but by June they went ahead and committed to November 13-14. Wanting to book my flights and get my car consigned, I emailed my contact guy there to confirm and was told Yes, the sale was on, but there were going to be a lot of rules. The attendees would be separated into groups of 250 people, masks would be mandatory, and a temperature check and contact tracing information would be required to even get in the door.
Okay, it sounded like they had a plan in place, but I still had my doubts. The picture below shows what a typical Mecum auction looks like. Splitting a crowd like this into groups of 250 seemed like the right gesture, but maybe not much else. Would it work?
After a summer that recorded over 1,500 deaths, Nevada’s numbers finally started falling in August. However, by October they were rising again, this time at an alarming rate. It seemed that people had simply become tired of COVID restrictions and just wanted to live normally again. But Sisolak issued another stern message, strongly urging residents to stay home as much as possible, and threatened a second lockdown if the numbers continued to rise. The auction was now only one month away - things weren’t looking good.
I read every news article I could find about what was happening there. Las Vegas as a whole had been hit particularly hard by the pandemic, spurred in good part by the complete absence of their usual busy convention business. One of the articles quoted from an interview with someone at the LVCVA itself. I looked her up and found her email address. Might as well get the story direct from the source, right?
Well, I’ll be a son of a gun. The convention capital of the US was going to emerge from hibernation with its first real event: A car auction from a family-run company out of Walworth, Wisconsin. Right on, let’s get this car on the block.
The car I was bringing was a 1966 Ford LTD - not really what people would call a muscle car, but it was sure built like one. With a mighty 427 big block mated to a 4-speed manual transmission, this LTD was a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
The day before the auction I got checked into the Mirage and then took the long walk over to the convention center. There weren’t a whole lot of people around, Las Vegas still kinda looked like the ghost town that I had seen on some of those recent YouTube videos.
The convention center was also real sleepy. I walked in through a wide open door and went looking for my car in the cavernous South Hall. Soon I found the Ford, and I saw that it had a tow rope attached to it. What tha? Wait, actually all the cars had one. I guess this year there wouldn’t be any vrooom-vrooom when the cars crossed the block, they would be towed across instead.
But where exactly was the auction block? It wasn’t where it normally is. I walked around a bit and finally found it in the smaller North Hall, the one that had divider walls. The place was dead quiet. Sure hope that changes by tomorrow.
That night I went to go check out Circa, downtown’s first new casino development in 40 years. It had opened just two weeks earlier, saddled with the dubious honor of debuting right in the middle of a worldwide pandemic. But I was impressed, they were handling it really well, despite being nearly empty. These days, Circa is still handling things well and is now my go-to place in Vegas. But boy, that first year was a tough one. Compare this:
….to the scene on any given weekend now.
The next morning I made the 40 minute walk to the auction and waited in line for a temperature check. When it came back higher than normal I explained that I had just walked over from the Mirage, which seemed to be a good enough answer for them. After filling out my info for contact tracing I was given a color-coded wristband that allowed me access to just one of three designated pods of 250 people. Inside, the auction stage was divided into three sections. Once the cars crossed past my section of view that was it, I had to watch the rest of it unfold on the video screen in front of me. It was kind of funny, and kind of depressing, but I also realized what a miracle it was that this was happening at all.
But hey, it’s still Vegas! Full of fun and amazing sights, like the Sphere….
…. which at that time was still under construction.
The last auction day was when my car was scheduled to cross. Most of the bidding activity that I’d seen so far had arrived from the internet or over the phone - no surprise there. Mecum’s normally bustling and frenetic stage had a funereal feel to it, despite the auctioneer’s always enthusiastic delivery. Eventually, I saw my Ford LTD getting unceremoniously towed in from the fleet of golf carts, and then later pushed by hand onto the block. I guess it’s showtime, if you could call it that.
As a seller at a live auction, you absolutely have to know what your bottom-line price is. Yes, you’ve already set your reserve price, but if your car isn’t getting any love the auction boss is going to be in your face urging you to drop the reserve and sell it. Accounting for the 10% seller’s fee they take, I had set the reserve at $40,000, which penciled to my net price of $36,000. Anything higher, great. Anything lower, you’re going to be talking to the boss as the clock tick ticks - and you had better be ready to make a quick decision.
Sure enough, my car’s starting to stall out at 31. The auction boss this time was Frank Mecum, Dana Mecum’s son. I’ve seen him at these auctions for several years as his dad’s right-hand man, but this time his dad’s not around. Frank’s in charge now, and he’s walking over to me.
“Look, you don’t have a single bid in this room. Got a dealer in Florida bidding on the phone, he’s your only buyer,” he tells me, from inches away.
“Okay, run him as close to 40 as you can,” I replied, finding myself in one of my least favorite situations.
Frank’s ringmen found a chandelier to help ping-pong the phone bidder up to 36.
He turned back to me with cold, set eyes peering out from above his mask. “36. Time to sell.”
“Put 35 in my pocket and it’s done,” I told him, knowing that there was a good chance he would just wave the car off the block. But instead he turned and raised his fist to the auctioneer.
“SOLD, SOLD, SOLD!” the auctioneer yelled, in time with his gavel.
This type of auction block negotiating isn’t uncommon, and Mecum didn’t get a bad deal out of it. They got $1000 off the sale from me as the seller, along with the $750 consignment fee that I had paid beforehand. The buyer’s fee of 10% gave them $3,600, for a total rake of $5,350. And that’s from just one mid-level car. There were 431 cars that crossed the block that weekend in November, albeit that was less than half of what would have normally been there.
It was also not a bad deal for Vegas. This niche car auction brought life back to the convention center for the first time in eight months, at a time when many off-Strip casinos were still closed and the Strip itself was having to take things day by day. This fun-time city was definitely not having fun, not in 2020.
In 2021 I actually went back to Vegas five times: twice for car auctions and three times just because. Sure, the mask mandates were a drag but once the vaccine became available Vegas seemed to get some of its groove back.
And today? It’s like none of it had ever happened. Vegas showed a lot of resilience in 2020, but at the end of the day this is a town that doesn’t like to look back.
I hadn't thought about the impact of Covid on Vegas. You brought it to life. And it was fun to reminisce about the Ford LTD!