Eastern Fall Yearling sale has long and proud history.
Fasig-Tipton’s Eastern Fall Yearling sale received less than rave reviews when it was conducted for the first time back in 1961. After 115 yearlings sold for a total of $187,100 (averaging $1,627), the sales company’s general manager, John Finney, offered his opinion that “results clearly showed there is no longer an eager market for cheap yearlings.” The Maryland Horse further noted “in several instances hopeless cripples were led into the ring. . . The buyer who looked only at his catalog was not a man to be envied.”
Seven years later, the embarrassing start was ancient history.
Gross sales receipts topped $1 million for the first time in 1968, as 225 yearlings sold for $1,123,300 and the average ($4,992) rose 11.6 percent over the previous year’s record.
By 1971, the sale had taken on luster. All of the Timonium sales pavilion’s 850 seats were reserved for prospective buyers and standing room was at a premium that year, as E.P. Taylor’s Windfields Farm made its debut as an Eastern Fall Yearling sales consignor. Windfields offered 15 yearlings, each with an announced reserve. Topping its consignment was a Northern Dancer filly (out of the *Ribot mare *Framed II) who brought $25,000; eight Windfields yearlings went unsold.
Results for 1972 smashed every existing record, with 178 horses selling for $1,277,900. More importantly, the sale lit up with its first six-figure horse—Northern Dancer’s half-brother Nostrum (by Dr. Fager), who entered the ring from the Windfields consignment with a $100,000 reserve and sold for $155,000. E.P. Taylor was pictured, catalog in hand, in The Maryland Horse, along with W.C. (Mike) Freeman, who made the final bid on behalf of the Cromwell Bloodstock Agency.
The 1980s brought solidification and growth, and the 1990s took the sale into territory previously uncharted by a Timonium yearling auction. In 1995 a Maryland-bred son of Citidancer, Latin Dancer, broke Nostrum’s 23-year-old record for the all-time most expensive Eastern Fall Sales yearling, selling for $210,000 on a bid by Jan, Mace and Samantha Siegel, who campaigned him to win graded stakes in California. The existing record, $500,000, was set in 2004 by a Silver Deputy colt consigned by Litz Bloodstock Services on behalf of longtime Maryland owner/breeder Joseph Keelty, and purchased by Mark Reid Bloodstock Agency.
Figures on page 94 of this magazine summarize what’s happened over the past 10 years. The sale went to an open format in 1997, discontinuing the practice of select and open sessions that began in the 1960s. With 638 yearlings catalogued in 1997, Fasig-Tipton was criticized for bringing in “too many horses.” The stable area, in fact, could not accommodate the crowd, and tents with temporary stalls were set up in the infield for the first time. The tents, rather than becoming a detriment to the sale, are now considered by many a prized location, a grassy enclave that lends itself to showing horses.
The three-day sale that generated $14,499,600 this fall is another record waiting to be broken.
Ask consignors and buyers what works about the Eastern Fall Yearling Sale, and most of them will tell you it has to do with quality—of the horses who sell here, the people who raise and sell them, the racing opportunities that surround them. And don’t forget the sales company that brings them all together. Fasig-Tipton Midlantic’s yearling auction is one of the best things the Mid-Atlantic region has going for it, and its evolution is a story in itself. .
