For one Sunday morning in June, the collector-car market’s most consequential voices will sit on a single stage in Beverly Hills’ backyard — and the people who set the prices the rest of us read about will be doing the talking. On Sunday, June 7, 2026, the Petersen Automotive Museum hosts the Collectors’ Summit 2026, a first-of-its-kind panel that gathers leaders from six of the auction houses that move the high-end car market: Barrett-Jackson, RM Sotheby’s, Gooding Christie’s, Broad Arrow Auctions, Mecum Auctions, and Cars & Bids. For collectors who think of automobiles as assets — and on the Westside, a great many do — this is less a museum program than a rare chance to read the market from the people writing it.

What’s actually happening

The Summit runs 10:00 AM to 1:00 PM at the Petersen, 6060 Wilshire Boulevard, with member load-in and a panelist meet-and-greet starting at 9:00 AM. General admission is $125, with Petersen members at $100, and the ticket bundles in general museum admission plus access to the Vault — the lower-level holding of cars the museum doesn’t display on the main floors, which is reason enough to come early. The morning opens with a reception, curated breakfast, and mimosas before the formal program.

The run of show is tight: welcome remarks at 10:45, the panel itself at 11:00, audience Q&A at 12:15, and a 1:00 close. That structure tells you what this is — not a trade show, but a seated conversation among people who rarely share a stage, followed by an open floor where collectors can put questions directly to the houses.

Why this panel is unusual

Auction houses compete. They compete for the same consignments, the same buyers, the same headline lots that anchor a sale and get quoted in the financial press for weeks afterward. Getting Barrett-Jackson, RM Sotheby’s, Gooding Christie’s, Broad Arrow, Mecum, and Cars & Bids to sit together and talk candidly about where the market is heading is, by the Petersen’s own framing, a first. Each of these houses occupies a distinct lane. Barrett-Jackson built its name on no-reserve Scottsdale theater. Mecum moves enormous volume across Americana and muscle. RM Sotheby’s and Gooding Christie’s anchor the blue-chip European and concours end, where a single car can clear eight figures. Broad Arrow has risen fast as the newer institutional player. And Cars & Bids represents the online-native, enthusiast-driven segment that has reshaped how a whole generation buys.

Put those six perspectives on one stage and you get something you can’t get from a single sale result: a read on whether the strength at the top is holding, whether the broad middle of the market is softening or firming, and where preservation — original, unrestored, documented cars — is being rewarded versus restoration.

The asset angle for collectors

The Summit’s stated themes are the evolving market, the future of automotive collecting, and the importance of vehicle preservation. For anyone who treats a garage as part of a portfolio, those are the three questions that matter. Collector cars sit in the same broad alternative-asset conversation as art, watches, and wine — illiquid, condition-sensitive, and powerfully driven by provenance and documentation. The difference between a car with a clean ownership chain and matching numbers and an otherwise identical car without that paper trail can be the difference between a strong result and a passed lot.

That’s where preservation, the Summit’s third theme, becomes an investment topic rather than a hobbyist’s preference. Original-condition cars and well-documented restorations have increasingly been rewarded at the top of the market, and hearing six houses describe how they’re advising consignors on that question is genuinely actionable. When you’re deciding whether to recommission a car before sale or present it as-found, the people on this panel are the ones whose catalog decisions set the comp.

It also matters for owners thinking about liquidity rather than acquisition. A collection of cars is a balance-sheet item that can be hard to value precisely and harder to monetize quickly — which is exactly why asset-based lending against vehicles, fine art, jewelry, and watches exists as a discreet alternative to forcing a sale into a soft window. Understanding where the auction houses see momentum helps an owner decide whether to consign now, hold, or borrow against the collection and wait for a stronger room. The collectors most fluent in this market tend to be the ones who know all three levers and choose deliberately among them.

Where it sits on the calendar

June is a deliberate moment for a market-state conversation. It lands after the winter Arizona auction cycle and the spring sales have set the year’s early tone, and before the Monterey Car Week sales in August that function as the collector-car calendar’s main event. A June summit is the market catching its breath and taking stock — early enough to inform summer consignment decisions, late enough to reflect on what the first half of the year actually proved. For a Westside collector weighing whether to put a car into a Monterey docket, a frank June read from the houses is close to ideal timing.

The Summit also anchors a busy stretch at the Petersen. It sits between the museum’s June 6 family programming and its June 13 Le Mans Beyond the Race event, with the Italian Car Cruise-In closing the month on June 28 — a reminder that the Petersen has become Los Angeles’ default gathering point for serious car culture, not just a place to look at cars behind glass.

The practical read

For collectors, the value here is concentration. In one morning you get six market-makers, a structured conversation about prices and preservation, an open Q&A, and Vault access — for $125. If you own cars you think of as assets, or you’re weighing whether to buy, sell, hold, or borrow against a collection before the Monterey window opens, this is the rare event where the people who set the numbers explain their reasoning out loud.

Tickets and the full run of show are available through the Petersen Automotive Museum. The doors open early; the conversation that matters starts at 11.

Beverly Loan Company covers the luxury-asset and collector calendar across Los Angeles. For collectors weighing liquidity against a soft or strong market, asset-based lending against vehicles, fine art, jewelry, and watches offers a confidential alternative to a forced sale.