Our favorite car auction site, Bring a Trailer, has launched an all-new series of Premium Listings that offers high-end services for fancy, expensive cars. And to mark the occasion, they’re putting up for sale their own gorgeous graphite gray 1956 Mercedes-Benz 300SL Gullwing. The other initial premium listings include a 1970 DeTomaso Mangusta, a 1970 Ford Mustang Boss 429 and a 1971 Ferrari 365 GTB/4 Daytona Berlinetta, but the 300SL is, without a doubt, the crown jewel of the group.
The new Plus level service costs $349 to list a car (as opposed to the original “Classic” list-it-yourself method, which is $99). For the added money, Bring a Trailer will send a photographer to you to take professional-grade photos of your car. And where a Classic listing only stays up for seven days, Plus gets you two extra weeks on top of that for a total of 21 days—because, you know, a $250,000 bid deserves more thought and deliberation. The White Glove service goes even further, with BaT taking care of the entire process from beginning to end; that’s reserved for “sellers with significant cars or collections,” and the only way to find out how much it costs is to email or call BaT directly.
To prove the concept, BaT placed this fully-restored 300SL up for sale with no reserve. The first bid was a wildly optimistic $1, followed by a cheeky $1,956, but subsequent bids rocketed to $500,000, then $750,000. As of this writing, the current offer sits at a lofty $950,000…and today marks only the second day of the three-week auction window.
As mind-boggling high as those figures are, the going rate for ’56 300SLs in “fair” condition, according to Hagerty, is around the $950,000 mark. This particular Gullwing is one of just 308 coupes built that year, only has 32,276 miles on the odometer, was meticulously restored over two years, and comes with complete, detailed vehicle documentation and history, so it’s safe to say it’s better than “fair.”
Bring a Trailer built its name on making car auctions easy and accessible for everyone; they say they never planned on selling six- and seven-figure vehicles, but the world had different plans for them. Now there’s a level of service which can do these upper-echelon cars justice. But, in true BaT fashion, you can still see a $600 dirtbike living next to a mid-century icon like this 300SL.
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