This end-of-year blog will have two components to it.   First, there was only one traditional Highwaymen auction scheduled for this month.  Originally, the Manor Auction was scheduled for December 13, but it was rescheduled at the last minute to December 6 (most collectors know why), so it has already occurred this past weekend.  As a result, I will write a brief review of this Manor auction in this blog, and then follow that with an annual re-cap of the Highwaymen auction market for 2025.

Note:   This blog will only cover the auction market and results at the various auction houses.  I will also be doing a separate blog later this month, which will specifically address trends and the performance of the different Highwaymen artists in the market during this past year.

The Manor Auction:

December is typically a slow month with Manor being the only auction house traditionally holding a Highwaymen auction.  While November saw 4 major Highwaymen auctions, and is typically the busiest month with the best offerings, Manor had the market to itself in December.  The auction house also seemed to have been saving much of its material to offer in December, believing it to be a month with few distractions of other auctions competing for collectors.

As a result, it was Manor’s largest auction of 2025, with 89 paintings offered for sale.  Nonetheless, the auction was not overly crowded with bidders, and with many empty seats in the room.  This was probably more a function of following the 4 previous auctions held in a 3 week period, and also the competition with 2 other large Highwaymen sales events being held the same day.

Clearly, most of the paintings in this auction were in Manor’s storage, as the last Manor auction was just held on November 15. It would not be possible to acquire 89 paintings, as well as produce and print a catalogue, all completed in just 3 weeks.  Further, many collectors were aware as early as September, that Manor had the early Alfred Hair done during his High School days, and was planning to auction it this month.  It seems that Manor was trying to build a major newsworthy auction to cap off the year, while no other auction house was in the market.  Nothing wrong with that strategy.

The auction itself could be characterized by several observations:

1. It was large, with 89 paintings.
2. There were several high profile paintings, which sold with very 
3. Mixed results.  Some of the top results did well, some did poorly.

1. Alfonso Moran (lot 31).  Target price 3,500;  Hammered at $12,500
2. Alfred Hair (lot 33).    Target price $6,000;  Hammered at $9,200
3. Harold Newton (lot 42).   Target price $15,000;  Hammered at $9,600
4. James Gibson (lot 53).   Target price $8,000;  Hammered at $6,400
5. Robert Butler (lot 83).   Target price  $8,000;  Hammered at $9,200

1. Target prices in this auction were all over the map. Some were clearly high, most were extremely low.  It reinforces the view that the auction house is in some way not being transparent about estimates/target prices.   For example:

1. It is frankly ridiculous that Manor thought the Moran target should be $3,500.  While not the best Moran, there has not been any Moran selling for less than $12,000 in the last 5 years.
2. The Harold Newton estimate of $15,000-$20,000 was clearly an attempt to push up the price on the painting.  It hammered at $9,200 – well under the standard reserve at Manor (80% of low est. = $12,000).  How could a painting hammer at 25% below the standard reserve?
3. While the Harold Newton had to be a clear attempt to place an artificially high target price on the painting, there were also many attempts to place artificially low target prices on paintings.  A Livingston Roberts (lot 70) had a target of $750 – an unheard of low estimate.  It hammered at $1,700.   Not really a surprise.
4. There were 11 Al Black paintings with target prices all in the $500-$1,000 range.  These generally seemed clearly low with the rise in Black prices during the last 6 months..
5. And of course, we have the monthly avalanche of Sam Newton paintings – all with the usual artificially high target prices. The auction house is trying to push prices high to support the single consignor who sells this flood of paintings every month.  As usual, this month 6 of the 7 Sam Newton paintings did not reach their low estimate.  The auction house knows what Sam Newton paintings sell for, yet they get it totally wrong month after month, in their effort to manipulate SNewton prices.

1. The financial metrics of this auction were as follows:

1. 89 paintings – Manor’s largest auction of the year, with 4 paintings that passed and failed to sell at a bid of 80% of the target price.
2. Total target prices were $226,600;  Total hammer prices were $242,825.  This represented a 7% premium over target (low but acceptable).
3. Despite generally low target prices, 14 of the 89 (21%) paintings did not reach their target.
4. The average hammer price of the 85 paintings that sold, was $ 2,856.

I receive a lot of texts and emails from people following the auctions, and in response to my blogs.  They are almost universally positive, but yes – there is an occasional comment that my reporting seems biased against Manor.  I do not believe that to be the case – it’s just that Manor seems to always have the same issues …   unusual sales results, with very strange estimates (some strangely low, and some strangely high).  I received this text from a major collector, who was following this week’s auction online.  I wanted to share it as this is the last blog of the year.

“  There’s some awesome offerings coming up in January. Watching the Manor auction now- one would think that they would offer video and sound since 99% of the bidders are from the internet. So odd. Alex knows how to use the media.  “

Many people have commented that Manor does not live-stream their auctions.  Most auction houses today do, as it is low cost, and very effective.  Liveauctioneers makes it very easy to live stream the auction with just a simple camera.  The video appears in a box on the bidding page.  I have heard from collectors who have spoken to Manor about this, that Manor does not want a recording of the auction available.  The only reason to not want recordings, is when there are things that they don’t want recorded.  I will leave it at that !

Conclusion Re: The Manor Auction

Clearly, the auction was an effort to end the year with a bang, on a high note.  Manor held on to the early Hair painting to sell in December after the launch of the movie – hoping to gain positive marketing from it.  I don’t know if that worked … in fact, I have hardly met anyone who has even brought up this interesting Hair painting.

I also believe Manor wanted to end the year surpassing (or at least equaling) the November Rennick auction.  However, no matter how you cut the data and metrics, Rennick has the market beat by a wide margin.

The December Manor auction is clearly an improvement and a key factor in reversing their slowing trends during 2025.  I am sure they will hope to capitalize on this and improve their performance results during 2026 – – but running an auction every month seems to be a challenge that no other auction house has attempted to duplicate.  The quantity also weakens the product.  Several auctioneers have told me that they don’t believe it is possible to accumulate enough quality paintings to auction every month – so they prefer to have fewer, but higher quality paintings in their auction.

I would like to be the first to wish the best to every auction house for the year ahead – whether they do 3, or 6, or 12 auctions a year !

The 2025 Highwaymen Auction Market:

In 2025, the Auction market was defined by the 4 major players:  (in alphabetical order!) 

Florida Highwaymen Auctions;  Davie

Manor Auctions;  Vero Beach

Rennick Auctions;  Vero Beach

Vero Beach Auction;  Vero Beach

Other reliable auction houses regularly selling a small selection of Highwaymen paintings include:

Abington Auctions;  Ft. Lauderdale

Burchard Auctions;  St. Petersburg

Helmuth Stone;  Sarasota

Hill Auction;  Sunrise

Wall Street Auction:  North Miami Beach

These auction houses typically have 1-5 Highwaymen paintings in many of their auctions, and results are not consistent because the paintings are sold with a large quantity of non-Highwaymen art and antiques.  As such, I will not comment on these business, but point out to collectors that there are occasionallyt interesting paintings that they sell.

I will discuss the special, one-off auction held this year in Kansas City by Circle Auctions;  Kansas City, Missouri

2025 AUCTION DATA SUMMARY AND COMMENTS:

I have run an extensive analysis of the combined auction activity for the year in order to summarize the market at the major auction houses.  Most collectors occasionally scan the auction listings beyond the 4 major auction houses, but the number of paintings that the others sell is insignificant compared to the major 4.  I have also added Circle Auctions into the analysis, to show how a single high quality auction can compare to the regular auctions we see regularly in Florida..

The auction houses are compared on the basis of size, as well as performance.  

I.  SIZE OF THE AUCTION HOUSES

AUCTION HOUSE COMPARATIVE SIZE

The three columns below represent (left to right): 

. the total number of paintings sold in 2025, 

. the total hammer price revenue in 2025, 

. and the number of auctions the auction house conducted during the year.  

Note:  it is impossible to format columns in facebook, which is why the dots are used to generally line up the columns.

1. Manor 695 $ 2,025 235    12
2. Rennick 338 $ 1,173,460    3
3. Florida Highwaymen 277   $ 719,800     6
4. Vero Beach 192   $ 412,085     6
5. Circle 36   $ 271,450     1

Clearly, Manor dominates the market in quantity due to their monthly auctions, but does not even double the quantity of paintings, or the hammer value of Rennick, despite having 4x the number of auctions.

Florida Highwaymen Auctions (”FHA”) has moved into 3rd place (4th place in 2024), and has been increasing their volume and quality rapidly during 2025.  If they continue on the same pace in 2026, I believe their statistics on volume will put them into second place next year as they are expected to do 6 auctions compared with Rennick’s 3.

.

It should be noted that the 277 paintings FHA auctioned in 2025 are paintings that would likely have been auctioned elsewhere.  For example, Manor auctioned 927 Highwaymen paintings in 2024, meaning their business had a decrease of 232 paintings in 2025.     At the same time, Rennick auctioned 256 paintings in their 3 auctions in 2024 – – an increase of 82 paintings auctioned in 2025.

Looking at the market size (number of paintings) and share, year-on-year, we can assess the following trend:

2024 2025 Change

Manor 927 695 232 decline

Rennick 256 338   82 increase

Florida Highwaymen   54 277 223 increase

Vero 205 192   13 decline

Annual Totals:         1,442 1,502

Clearly, the size of the market (number of paintings being auction in a year), has not changed much … the market has grown by 4%.   However, the trend is clear that the market is shifting away from Manor, is stable for Vero, and the growth is being dominated by Rennick and Florida Highwaymen.  A decline of 232 paintings is very significant.   It is essentially the size of 3 monthly auctions at Manor combined.

II.  PERFORMANCE OF THE AUCTION HOUSES

MEASURING AUCTION HOUSE ABILITY TO ESTIMATE PAINTINGS

Percentage of paintings not reaching the low estimate.

1. Circle 0%
2. Manor 31%
3. Vero Beach 32%  
4. Rennick 45%
5. Florida Highwaymen 61%

As most people who read my blogs know, I often criticize the estimates at auctions.  They are usually too high, (and now there are also many examples where the estimates are clearly ridiculously too low). I believe it is not realistic that auction estimates are always so far off.   This month at Manor, 6 of the 7 Sam Newton paintings did not reach their target price (low estimate).  This says to me that something is wrong, because Manor sells more Sam Newton paintings than anyone in the market, and they know the value.

Nonetheless, Manor came out on top of the 4 Florida auction houses with the best record of 31% of their paintings sold NOT reaching the low estimate.  What has happened here? … at the beginning of the year, Manor’s estimates had one of the worst records of reaching the target.  Estimates were all extremely high, and I wrote month after month that the estimates at Manor were not realistic, and it was actually hurting their hammered prices. (The major global auction houses all know that the lower the estimates, the more bidding you get, typically resulting in higher hammer results).  Well, Paul must have finally read my blogs, and Manor flipped almost entirely from having estimates way too high, to having estimates extremely low.  The second half of this year, their estimating performance improved greatly, negating the very poor estimating performance at the beginning of the year.  End result … they beat the other auction houses.  Good news ! – but they still insist on overestimating every Sam Newton they sell , and also overestimating most Harold Newton’s, for the same reason !

Of note, Rennick auction has a no reserve auction policy.  That means that every painting sells for whatever is bid.  Auction estimates are not as important in such cases, because there is no reserve at 80% of the low estimate, as is typically the case at Manor.

In the case of Florida Highwaymen, the only explanation for such miserable results that I can think of is that it’s just part of their learning curve, as this was the first full year they have been in business. Their hammer price performance is still good, but would be even better if they got their estimates down to reasonable levels.

Historically, Vero Beach has had the best track record of estimating paintings in their auctions.

2025 AVERAGE HAMMER PRICES

1. Circle $7,540
2. Rennick $3,483
3. Manor $3,008
4. Florida Highwaymen $2,787
5. Vero Beach $2,294

Clearly, Circle Auction was a unique auction, selling a single-owner collection in Kansas City.  It’s location didn’t stop bidders, who were clearly mostly bidding from Florida. They achieved a staggering average hammer price of more than $7,500 for each of the 36 paintings in the auction.  That’s better than double any auction house results in Florida.

What do these average hammer price numbers mean? … It’s an indication of the quality of the paintings being sold, and of the auction house itself.  Everyone wants to see and bid on higher quality paintings.  Further, the drawing power of the auction house, in turn, can often more easily obtain consignments of paintings to sell, based upon their performance . 

Rennick significantly outperforms the other 3 auction houses with the highest average hammer prices.  Florida Highwaymen is actually very close to Manor, despite their terrible performance in estimating the paintings being sold.  This tells you that estimates probably don’t matter much.  The market determines prices – not the estimates from the auction houses.

THE NUMBER OF HIGHWAYMEN PAINTINGS 

EXCEEDING $15,000 HAMMER PRICE

1. Rennick 6 Highest hammer in 2025:  $31,000
2. Manor 5 Highest hammer in 2025:  $37,000 
3. Florida Highwaymen 5 Highest hammer in 2025:  $20,000
4. Circle 2 Highest hammer in 2025:  $45,000
5. Vero Beach 0 Highest hammer in 2025:  $12,500

Everyone like to see the highest quality paintings come up at auction.  It’s exciting for the auction goers, and it lends an aire of success for the auction house that is selling the painting.  The highest quality paintings project an image of high quality of the auction house as well.

There was no magic to the break point I have chosen of $15,000.  If going down to $10,000, there was simply a lot of paintings, and a $10,000 hammer price is no longer considered unusual by collectors.  $15,000 now seems to be the break point that separates the truly exceptional paintings from the normal.

Again, it’s an an interesting note that both Manor and Florida Highwaymen each had 5 paintings in this category, while Manor had double the number of auctions.  However, Manor had a couple of higher priced paintings with the top at $37,000.   The highest priced painting of the year, at a hammer price of $45,000, was auctioned by Circle Auctions !

Conclusion:

The purpose of this year-end auction house roundup is to assess what has been going on in the auction market, and how much activity there has been.  

It’s been an active year with the growth and impact of Florida Highwaymen, and what I fully believe have been significant changes in strategy by Manor.  I did not realize until this analysis how much activity and market share Manor has lost, but I suppose Manor realized it mid-year and started making changes to their methods and estimating at that time.  In fact, without their secure supply of paintings by Sam Newton, Willie Daniels, and Harold Newton, from which they are trying to prop up the market and prices, their activity and share would be even less.  The Manor Highwaymen business has declined by 25% this year, which is the apparent reason they have been adding more Florida art, and more of the other items such as jewelry.

I hope my few critics will not say I am being harsh on Manor.  The data are the data, and the facts are the facts.  Manor is in a serious competitive decline, while Rennick and Florida Highwaymen are growing in a meaningful way.

Rennick has grown larger and stronger in this competitive turmoil, and Vero Beach has held their own historical business steady.

I have also heard directly from another Highwaymen dealer that he had secured an auction license, and was planning to start an auction business this past quarter.  That didn’t happen, but at some point I expect it will.  This will only further heighten the competitiveness in the market.  It seems that the total volume of paintings being sold at auction is remaining fairly steady, so any new participant can only generate business by taking it from one of the other 4 !

Hopefully, this will all result in lower selling fees, as the auction houses compete for the consignments !

Thanks for reading !

FYI – the year-end review of the individual artists in the market will be coming before the end of the year.  It will be an interesting report.

Happy Hunting !

Mark Lerner

786-599-5816

https://www.TheHighwaymenCollector.com

Illustrated below:  The earliest Alfred Hair to come to auction.

12×16, Oil on cheesecloth on board;  Target: $6,000;  Hammer: $9,200