GLEAMING, FACINATING MOVING OBJECTS
A portion of an article
By Robert Cumberford
In Sports Car Market April 2012

Shiny inanimate objects fascinate living beings. That's true for thieving magpies, pack rats, and – above all- for humans. From the first time an opposable-thumb primate picked up a glittering seashell simply to admire it,on through our prehistoric ancestors seeking and keeping translucent stones, we have cherished scintillating reflecting surfaces –ideally on objects we can hold in our hands. When, a few hundred years back, we were exposed to constructs that were not only shiny but also had moving parts, we were mesmerized. Who can look at the works of a clock, a watch or a steam engine in motion and not be entranced?

So it is not too surprising that the automobile should become an object of acquisitive desire. Cars are for the most part shiny, they move, and they can accept a tremendous amount of non-functional decoration. Even so, cars were for a very long time only seen as transient useful objects, not collectibles. I can remember Duesenbergs on offer for $500 when I was a child, and not a few of them went to scrap yards because there was so much recoverable metal in them.

It is really only in the last 50 years that we have seen serious interest in preserving older cars – in good working order – in the United States. Part of the reason lies with the huge population bulge we now call the Baby Boomers . The first of that immediate post- World War II coterie is now at retirement age, and a great part of the group is prosperous enough to buy the shiny object of nostalgia they covet as talismans of their youth.
Science fiction writer William Gibson, writing about his own obsession with mechanical watches, celebrated that they are "so brilliantly unnecessary." He also noted that Baby Boomers' toys were often ephemeral plastic things long since reduced to nothingness.

But their daddy's cars are still here, and they represent semi-useful possessions. Or so they can tell each other – and almost believe it. There must have been at least 10,000 Boomers at Arizona Auction Week in January , and as you can see from the results , they spent tens of millions of dollars on vehicles they never intend to use for practical transport.

The auction scene in Arizona was all new to me. It might have been overwhelming, with literally thousand of cars on offer, were it not for the fact that so few were really what I would consider collectibles. Thousands of cars, hundreds of trucks (trucks?), and many tons of automobilia changed proprietors, but I would put objects of true collectible value at considerably less than half the total. .Once you modify your mass-market, never-rare '57 Chevy in any way at all, it ceases to be a historical artifact and becomes essentially just a used car, however much someone may pay when it crosses the block. The "matching-numbers" mantra is tiresome, but there really is value in originality and authenticity.

I was really surprised that I admired hundreds of cars, but not one compelled desire. For me, the plenitude of vehicles in Arizona was as big a turn-off as an eight-page, small print dinner menu offering so many things that appetite dissipates at the mere thought of choosing. I suspect that a more restrained offering might have had me fidgeting with my wallet. After all, I only have three project cars and two drivers, and there were many truly worthy machines at "reasonable" prices I could easily convince myself I "really need." As did not a few other people during that high-energy week.

As fascinating as the multifarious vehicles at the main auction were, I was more entranced by the attending crowds. Family values were extremely high: I saw dozens of late-middle-aged men who were kind enough to bring their "nieces" to the auctions. These girls profited from the mild Arizona weather to wear the skimpiest summer dresses in January.