Ferrari 250 GTO hitting Bonhams in August - but how much will it sell for?

A Ferrari 250 GTO – chassis 3851 GT from the Violati Collection – is hitting Bonhams Quail event in California next month. But how high will the price go?

Will the Violati Ferrari 250 GTO (pictured) break the $60 million barrier?

The last Ferrari 250 GTO Series 1 to hit auction rooms in 2012, fetched a remarkable $35 million, and last year another 250 GTO – chassis #5111 – was sold in a private deal thought to be worth $52 million. And now another Series 1 250 GTO is about to hit the sale room.

Ferrari 250 GTO #3851 GT has long been in possession of the Violati family and housed in the Maranello Rosso Collection on display in Italy.

When Fabrizio Violati died a few years ago, the family put the entire collection up for sale but never managed to find a buyer, perhaps because they would only sell the entire collection – and the museum building – intact. And it was quite a collection.

Comprising of more than 30 classic Ferraris and a huge number of Abarths, no one was prepared to come up with the asking price, a price that grew by the day as the prize of the collection – the Ferrari 250 GTO – grew in value. When we last heard, the asking price was well north of $100 million.

But either the Violati family has had a change of heart and decided to split the collection up, or someone has finally stepped in, snapped up the whole collection and decided to start punting the cars out to auction rooms.

Whichever it is, Fabrizio Violati’s Ferrari 250 GTO will hit the auction room at Bonhams sale in Quail on August 14th, and there’s every expectation it could fetch a world record price. Somewhere upwards of $60 million seems not unlikely.

So if you’ve got pockets deep enough to acquire one of just 33 Series 1 Ferrari GTOs, you’d better grab the Bonhams catalogue for Quail, get your cash in the right place and dig deep.

But just in case a 250 GTO is out of your price bracket – and it is for all but a handful of collectors around the world – we’ve listed all the Ferrari’s in the Fabrizio Violati collection below, because if the 250 GTO is hitting the auction room there’s a fair chance a number of these will be too before long (if some haven’t already).