Tattersalls yearling sale ends with gains overall
The Tattersalls October yearling sale ended Friday with healthy gains overall after selling the highest-priced yearling of the European and North American season so far.
The three-book auction in Newmarket, England, consisted of seven sessions that sold 1,222 yearlings for an aggregate of about $130,700,997 and an average price of about $106,957. The median was approximately $58,065. The gross was up 8 percent from last year's total, and the average and median prices rose by 26 percent and 29 percent, respectively.
The buy-back rate also improved from last year's 28 percent to 19 percent.
The overall sale-topper brought 1.7 million guineas, about $2.8 million, during the Book 1 portion of the sale. That was a Galileo filly, a three-quarters-sister to Henrythenavigator's dam. Kazakhstan's Nurlan Bizakov bought the chestnut daughter of Brigid, by Irish River, from Oaks Farm Stables.
The single-day Book 3 portion of the auction closed Friday with a 29-percent increase in the average price and a 57-percent increase in median price, upswings that were indicative of the market's strength on the whole. The Friday session's sold a Kyllachy-Quantum filly for about $107,835. Rabbah Bloodstock bought the session-topper, from the family of Footstepsinthesand, from Shortgrove Manor Stud.
Friday's closing session also featured an unusual attraction in Hip No. 1666, a colt by American-bred sire I Was Framed. The catalog described him as "a Painted Colt," and this he was: a brown and white paint Thoroughbred. Voute Sales agency consigned the son of Polistatic, a winner by Artzola, on behalf of Andbell Stud.
The colt's appearance in the ring generated a great deal of excitement and drew crowds into the pavilion to watch the bidding for this unusual offering, an April 1, 2010, foal. In the end he sold for 11,000 guineas, or about $18,249, to Boyce Bloodstock, as the crowd applauded. The colt's dam is a full sister to stakes-winner Western Dancer and Group 2-placed Mango Express.