GAINESVILLE, Ga. -

Turning the calendar to 2011 didn’t exactly accelerate the activity at all auctions last week, according to Black Book’s Ricky Beggs.

The managing editor shared during his weekly video session of “Beggs on the Used Car Market” that there were “mixed comments” coming in from Black Book’s survey personnel.

“Some auctions were reported as ‘active and strong,’ while a couple of comments from the Black Book survey personnel thought things were ‘weaker than expected.’ One even said, ‘It seemed like a year-end mentality, not new-year aggressiveness,’” Beggs highlighted.

“There were even more comments regarding how some dealers thought things were getting stronger and that the holiday sales were pretty good and additional inventory was needed,” he continued.

Black Book determined the types of price adjustments made last week and during the previous two reflected a definite need for inventory. During the past three weeks, Black Book found at least 50 percent of adjustments were increases. Last week, that percentage jumped to 63 percent.

“This is a reflection of more aggressive bidding,” said Beggs, who added that saturation of rising price adjustments hadn’t been that high since last May.

“This time last May was also the last time — other than last week — where the total changes were a positive number,” he also noted.

Black Book discovered the 10 car segments showed improvement this past week. The company conceded that even though all 10 segments declined for the week, there were three segments where the weekly change was less of a drop than the previous week.

Leading that trend was a $70 improvement within premium sporty cars, which dropped just $66.

“What makes this even more impressive is that this is only the second week since back in July of last year where this segment declined less than $100 for the week,” stated Beggs, who also mentioned two other segments that showed marked improvement were entry level cars and near luxury cars.

Even with the increases in gasoline prices in recent weeks, Black Book found 10 of the 14 truck segments went up in value last week. Overall truck prices moved up $11.

Two segments with significant increases were the luxury SUVs (up $87) and full-size pickups (up $36). Beggs also spotted two truck segments that declined in value last week but not as much as the previous one: full-size SUVs and midsize CUVs.

The two truck segments with the greatest price drops last week according to Black Book were full-size crossovers (down $50) and compact SUVs (down $24).

Beggs also pointed out a wide array of different 2011 and 2010 models received their first market driven values. Among the 24 units now included are the Scion XB Release Series 7.0, the Honda Odyssey EX-L and the Porsche Panamera.

“We are all excited to be full steam ahead into the 2011 market, focused on digging deeper into the market data and spreading our searches even further as we will be adding another five to six more auctions this year to the already significant 59 we physically cover every week,” Beggs highlighted.

“We are also committing additional time to watching even more auctions online, allowing our editors to watch auctions from all over the country,” he added.

Wrapping up his latest report, Beggs mentioned the annual exotic and collectible car auctions coming this month in Arizona. He called Black Book’s CPI Editor, Eric Lawrence a “walking encyclopedia regarding this market.” Beggs said Lawrence plans to be on hand to check out the trends “in this heart-thumping market.”

Beggs concluded his session by saying, “We hope you have a great week building the right inventory at the right prices. Let us know how you feel about the market when we see you on the auction lanes.”

To watch Beggs’ video, visit this website.