When asked why he loved Porsches so much, Jerry Seinfeld once described them as the most "humanistic" of sports cars.
"Most high-end sports cars remind me of Halloween costumes," he told a German newspaper, likening these cars to masks their owners are wearing. "A Porsche feels like a warm, round pebble in your hand. ... Even the shape and the face of a Porsche carry some human-like elements."
Now, Seinfeld is sending some of his smiling Porsches back into the world. Gooding & Co. will be auctioning off three of Seinfeld's Porsches at its Amelia Island Auction in Florida on March 11.
The top car is a 1955 Porsche 550 Spyder, with an estimate of $5 million to $6 million. He's also selling a 1958 356 A 1500 GS/GT Carrera Speedster, which is expected to sell for between $2 million and $2.5 million. There also is a 1974 911 Carrera 3.0 IROC RSR, which could fetch between $1.2 million and $1.5 million.
It's likely that Seinfeld's cars will sell for far more than he paid for them — partly because of the soaring value of Porsches in recent years, partly because of his name and partly because of how meticulously he restores and cares for his cars. A Seinfeld Porsche is like a "Rockefeller Rothko" or a "Thannhauser Kandinsky" — the prominent owner gives it what collection snobs call "provenance."
But Seinfeld says he's not selling the cars to cash in. He's selling so other people can appreciate and drive them.
"I've never bought a car as an investment," he said in the Gooding press release. "I don't really even think of myself as a collector. I just love cars. And I still love these cars. But it's time to send some of them back into the world for someone else to enjoy, as I have."
Don't worry. Jerry still has plenty of Porsches in his collection. How many? We don't know. But as he told Seth Meyers in his "Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee," it's "an amount that if you looked at it, you would not go 'Oh, well that makes sense.'"