The Most Expensive Model Ts Sold at Auction

Ford built the Model T in enormous numbers, and that is exactly why the top of its market is so thin. Most Ts trade as approachable, usable antiques. A handful break away from the pack, and they almost always do it for the same reasons: age, documentation and a story that survives scrutiny. For the wider picture of who owns these cars and why, see the Model T hobby story.

Serial no. 2: the most expensive Model T on the record

Lot 281 at Amelia Island in 2022 was a 1908 Touring catalogued as serial no. 2. Bonhams described it as "believed to be the earliest Model T surviving," and both the Bonhams result page and the Conceptcarz price database show the $246,400 result.

The provenance is the kind appraisers like, with one soft spot. The car was found in upper Michigan. Donald Hess bought it sight unseen for $400 in the fall of 1958. Restoration began in 1995 and took six years, and the finished car took a 1st Prize (Junior) at Hershey in 2001. A UK collector then bought it from Hess and kept it on static display, and it was his estate that sent it back across the block.

Now the soft spot. Bonhams' own catalog says the car's history as no. 2 "cannot documentarily be proved." Read that sentence twice. The car brought a quarter of a million dollars on a belief, well supported but not sealed. A buyer at that level was paying for the strongest available claim to being the oldest surviving Model T, and pricing in the risk that a better document might one day surface for another car, or that none ever would.

Why the earliest cars bring the most

Early Model Ts are a different object from a 1925 Tudor. Serial numbers from about 1 to 2,500 cover the cars built between October 1908 and April 1909, before the design was largely standardized. The very first cars were "two-lever, two-pedal" machines, a layout reportedly replaced after the first 500 to 800 cars. Each of those features is a checkable fact on the car itself, and checkable facts are what move money at this end of the market.

The pattern shows in the data. Conceptcarz tracks 22 auction sales of 1909 Model Ts, and it files serial no. 2 among them. Below that car, the best yearly results it shows are $121,000 in 2015, $81,400 in 2006 and $68,200 in 2007. RM sold a 1909 Town Car, dated by its serial to May 1909, at St. John's in 2011 for $66,000 (lot 153). None of those come near serial no. 2, but all of them sit far above what a later Model T usually brings. Age alone carries a premium. Age plus a defensible serial number carries a much larger one.

Body style and period function matter too. A 1912 Delivery Car, a body style Ford built only 1,825 of, sold for $52,800 at RM's Hershey sale in October 2012 (lot 152), even though so little of its original body survived that it was rebuilt in 1975. A 1925 Model T coupe fitted with a "Snow Flyer" ski and track kit brought $30,250 at the same sale (lot 243). Neither is a headline number. Both show buyers paying above the usual range for a car that was built to do something specific and still can.

The $335,500 figure, and why I leave it off the list

Search long enough and you will find a higher number. Conceptcarz lists a top sale of $335,500 for a 1923 Model T. On its face, that beats serial no. 2 by almost $90,000.

The problem is everything around it. The listing names no car, no auction house and no date. A 1923 Model T was a late, mass produced car, and a standard example simply does not trade anywhere near that level. The most likely explanation is a custom, a hot rod or some special car that happens to carry a 1923 title. That might be a fine machine. It is not evidence about what Model Ts are worth.

From an appraiser's chair, an unidentified sale is worth exactly nothing as a comparable. You cannot inspect it, you cannot read its catalog description, and you cannot tell whether the hammer fell on a Model T or on something built from a Model T's paperwork. Until someone can name the car and the sale, it stays off the list.

"A price without a lot number is a rumor with a dollar sign in front of it. Serial no. 2 earns its spot because you can pull the catalog and read the caveat for yourself."

Marcus Feld

What the rest of the market looks like

The top sales make sense only against the middle. In the UK, The Classic Valuer tracks 391 Model T sales with a median of £10,169 since 2020, and its highest result since 2020 is £78,996. In the US, Conceptcarz has 229 auction sales of 1923 Model Ts alone on file, and the most recent of them, at Mecum Tulsa in June 2026, brought $20,900. Those are the numbers most buyers will actually meet.

Put that UK median next to $246,400 and the gap is close to twenty times. That is not a smooth curve. It is a cliff, and almost every Model T lives at the bottom of it. The cars at the top are not simply nicer examples. They are a different category of object, closer to a historical artifact than a usable antique, and they trade on documentation rather than paint.

Liquidity follows the same split. A sound, ordinary Model T sells in any season to a large pool of club members and first time buyers. A six figure early car has a small pool, and the price on the day depends heavily on who is in the room. That cuts both ways: it can produce a strong number, and it can leave a car unsold.

One more trap. Searches for an expensive "Ford Model A" often surface the 1903 Model A rear entry tonneau that sold for $264,000 at RM Hershey in 2012 (lot 189). That is the 1903 car, not a Model T and not the 1928 to 1931 Model A. If you want the later car's numbers, look at the top Model A sales instead.

Reading a top Model T sale before you trust it

The short version: the most expensive Model T anyone can verify brought $246,400, and it did so on the strength of age, a serial number and a well kept story. Value on these cars is condition plus documentation plus liquidity, and at the top of the market documentation outweighs the other two. Anyone quoting a bigger number should be able to show you the paper. If they cannot, treat it as a story, not a price.

Sources and notes

• 1908 Ford Model T Touring, serial no. 2, lot 281 (Bonhams, Amelia Island 2022)
• 1909 Ford Model T auction data (Conceptcarz)
• 1923 Ford Model T auction data (Conceptcarz)
• 1912 Ford Model T Delivery Car, lot 152 (RM Sotheby's, Hershey 2012)
• 1925 Ford Model T "Snow Flyer" Coupe, lot 243 (RM Sotheby's, Hershey 2012)
• Ford Model T sales data (The Classic Valuer)