Lies, damned lies and October Yearling Sale statistics: why the figures don’t tell the full tale from Tattersalls

What goes up must come down. That was the story of the figures during the two weeks of the Tattersalls October Yearling Sale. 

An amazingly buoyant 2022 edition of Book 1 saw a rising tide lift all ships, but at this year’s renewal of the blue-chip auction spending fell by a full 25 per cent year-on-year. The average price was also down by 18 per cent and the median back by ten per cent. The market was a long way away from where it was 12 months ago, and that rather set the tone for the nine sessions of selling over the last fortnight. 

Some 1,862 yearlings came under the hammer during the four Books of the October Yearling Sale, and 1,531 of those found a buyer for a clearance rate of 82 per cent. In turn, those 1,531 transactions yielded turnover of 158,567,500gns. This may be a mammoth figure but it is 20 per cent down on last year’s record. The average price of those 1,531 sold lots was 103,571gns, which was down 18 per cent on the corresponding figure from 2022, while the median price dipped by ten per cent to 52,000gns.