Bargain buys prove that non-select sales can yield hidden gems

Few articles we have published prompted the feedback that an analysis of the market at last week's Goffs UK Premier and Silver Yearling Sales in Monday's Racing Post did. In it, we illustrated how trade held up well in the upper echelons at Doncaster but struggled lower down, and drew attention to the plummeting clearance rate at the enlarged Silver Sale, suggesting there was a pressing issue of supplying outweighing demand.

One letter we received, printed below, stood out in particular as it raises an important point: that, because it was at the supposedly non-select Silver Sale where figures declined most and demand was least, it does not necessarily mean the horses who were on offer there are the root of the problem of overproduction, the horses who should not have been bred.

Goffs UK are widely acknowledged as doing an excellent job of selecting and placing horses for its yearling auctions and have a long list of top-class graduates who did not have the most obvious pedigrees to prove that. But no sales company can legislate for a good-looking yearling at the time of inspection regressing, or a less attractive horse growing into a swan.