What is Mecum Glendale?
Mecum Glendale is the Arizona stop of Mecum Auctions, the Wisconsin company that sells more collector cars than anyone else in the country: five days each March at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, with about 2,000 cars consigned, 1,300 or more crossing the block, and a running total that reached about $47 million in 2026. It is Mecum’s only sale in the state, it is televised on ESPN and ESPN+, and a $30 day ticket (2025 price) puts you on the stadium floor among the Corvettes, Hemi Chargers, Cobras and restomod trucks that make up most of the catalog. The 2027 sale is expected March 16–20, Tuesday to Saturday, though as of October 2026 Mecum has not posted the dates; the 2026 sale was March 17–21.
It exists because of a phone call. State Farm had just bought the naming rights to the Cardinals’ stadium in 2018 and was already a Mecum sponsor; Mecum asked about the building, and in March 2019 held a sale there that was announced as two days, stretched to four by the consignments that poured in, and sold about $31 million. Every year since, it has filled the gap on the Arizona calendar that Mecum itself created by skipping January: its Kissimmee, Florida, sale, the largest in the world at $445 million in 2026, occupies the first half of that month, so Mecum has never competed in Arizona Car Week.
For a Scottsdale visitor it is the second act of the auction season, two months after Barrett-Jackson and in the middle of spring training, 35 minutes west of Old Town in a March that is already the busiest month of the year.
How to do it
Tickets. General admission in 2025 was $30 a day or $75 for three days, with 25 percent off tickets bought online before the sale opened, and children 12 and under free. The 2023 sale charged $20 in advance and $30 at the gate; 2026 pricing was listed only as “various,” so budget $30. Bidder registration, which starts at $100 and includes admission for two, is the only way to raise a paddle, and it also gets you remote bidding online or by phone if you want to buy from a resort pool.
Getting there and parking. State Farm Stadium is at 1 Cardinals Drive, at Loop 101 and Glendale Avenue in Glendale’s Westgate district, about 35 minutes from Old Town up the 101. Parking has been free in the stadium’s east lot. Doors open at 8 a.m.; road art and memorabilia sell from 9 and the cars start at 10. There is no useful transit.
Which day. Tuesday and Wednesday are the volume days, hundreds of driver-quality cars at $20,000 to $60,000 and the shortest lines. The featured consignments and collections run Thursday through Saturday, when ESPN is live, the stands fill and the million-dollar lots cross in the late afternoon. Thursday is the sweet spot; Saturday is the show.
On the floor. The sale runs on the stadium floor with the overflow in the outdoor lots and the surrounding concourse. Walk the lots first with the printed catalog or the Mecum app; every car carries a lot card and the auction order is posted. Then take a seat in the stands above the block: a lot every couple of minutes, bidder assistants working the floor, the Bid Goes On desk closing no-sales after the hammer. A kids’ Adventure Zone with Power Wheels and slot cars was added in 2025.
Eat and sleep. The stadium concessions are stadium concessions. The Westgate Entertainment District across the lot has a dozen chain restaurants and bars, and Camelback Ranch, the Dodgers and White Sox spring-training park, is ten minutes south for a 1 p.m. game; see the site’s spring training guide. The practical advice in the site’s Car Week auction survival guide on reading a lot description, buyer’s premiums and the difference between reserve and no-reserve applies here with one change: most Mecum lots carry a reserve.
What to skip. The three-day pass unless you are bidding, and Tuesday morning unless you are selling.
From two days to five
Dana Mecum started his company in 1988 in Wisconsin and built it on volume: muscle cars, Corvettes, trucks and motorcycles sold by the thousand at Kissimmee, Indianapolis and a dozen other stops. Arizona had been Barrett-Jackson’s territory for decades, and Mecum’s calendar kept it out of January, so the Glendale sale of March 14–17, 2019 was a test. Announced for two days, it drew so many consignments that it grew to four before it opened, listed about 1,250 cars and, by the unofficial count at Classic.com, sold 730 of them for about $31 million. By 2023 the sale had reached its current shape of five days and about 2,000 consignments. The 2024 sale, March 5–9, topped $54 million with 942 cars sold and a 1967 Corvette L88 coupe at $1.8 million. The 2026 sale, March 17–21, brought more than 1,300 vehicles and about $47 million at a 70 percent sell-through, led by a 1966 Shelby 427 Cobra roadster at $1,842,500, a 1970 Lamborghini Miura P400 at $1,705,500, a 1959 Mercedes-Benz 300SL roadster at $907,500 and a 2018 Ford GT at $770,000; the Petersen Automotive Museum sent a collection of 1930s Ford hot rods that sold for more than $400,000 in total. Mecum’s chief operating officer Sam Murtaugh told the Peoria Times the company returns “year after year” because the stadium has “no shortage of space,” and put attendance at 50,000 to 60,000 across the five days.
Mecum, Barrett-Jackson and the rest
The Valley now has two auction seasons. January is Car Week: Barrett-Jackson at WestWorld for nine days, RM Sotheby’s, Gooding, Bonhams and the catalog houses at the resorts, and the Russo and Steele sale that came and went, all selling in a single week to the same crowd. March is Mecum alone, in a football stadium rather than a tent city, with a catalog that reads like the Barrett-Jackson docket from the Tuesday-to-Thursday sessions: more Chevelles than Ferraris, more trucks than anything, prices that top out at $2 million rather than $10 million, and reserves on much of it. The crowd is different too: more families, more Cactus League tourists in team caps. For the buyer it is the better place to find a $40,000 driver; for the spectator it is the cheaper ticket and the shorter drive to a ballgame afterward.
The Scottsdale angle
Scottsdale owns January. WestWorld’s tents, the Hayden Road traffic and the hotels covered in the site’s note on staying near WestWorld for Barrett-Jackson are the city’s biggest week of the year. Mecum’s sale is the reminder that the Valley’s collector-car economy no longer fits in one week or one city: the same consignors, the same transport trucks and many of the same bidders come back in March, to Glendale, and the Scottsdale visitor who missed Car Week can see the same sport played in a different stadium. Pair it with a Goodguys Spring Nationals weekend at WestWorld, which falls in the same month, and a spring-training game, and March becomes the second car month on the Scottsdale calendar.