“2020 is proving to be a year of firsts and the overwhelming majority are largely negative caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. However today’s Goffs HIT Sale has been a positive as it has the distinction of being the first live auction conducted purely online in UK or Ireland. Whilst we are not pretending this was by design as we were forced to react to the current restrictions in Ireland, we have been very pleased with the reaction from both vendors and purchasers with plenty of spirited online bidding as well as several telephone bids leading to a very acceptable trade for the catalogue on offer headed by a very respectable six figure top price that comfortably surpassed last year’s and a proper rise in the average price. Indeed, today’s experience has been encouraging enough for us to decide that our Autumn Yearling Sale will also be run as a live online auction in a couple of weeks’ time.
 
We would like to thank those vendors that stood their ground and gave us the chance to prove the worth of our online platform as it was truly a leap of faith for every one of them. We are also very grateful to the large number of purchasers who interacted with us remotely and wish them the very best of luck with their purchases, all of which were offered with veterinary certificates, online films and as much information as we could provide. Indeed, we were overwhelmed by the level of interest with 250 individual registrations to bid online which is quite something for an 86 lot sale.
 
I confess that today was quite surreal in many ways as we auctioned to an empty sales arena but it certainly proved that the bloodstock industry is extremely adaptable which gives us all belief that we will navigate a way through this terrible time”.