Thanksgiving dinners with family and friends likely provided the main ingredient for a wholesale market recipe that prompted Black Book to report the lowest amount of value decline analysts have seen since the third week of July.

Black Book’s newest installment of Market Insights indicated that wholesale prices softened by just 0.60% during the week that ended two days after Thanksgiving.

The estimated average weekly sales rate continued to drop, too, sliding to 50% last week.

“With Thanksgiving now behind us, auction activity seems slow, but this is no surprise as we are approaching the end of the year,” Black Book said in the report. “Being the last quarter of the year and with some model year 2023 vehicles trickling through the lanes, we expect to continue to see more 2024 launches.

“Some sellers are still holding tight to their floors and have hopes in the market taking a turn into positive territory. Buyers are still bidding, but many sellers are staying firm on their prices,” analysts continued. “Although sales rates are still down, it seems as if some sellers are willing to negotiate, with a few more ‘if’ sales coming through. Inventory across the board was still down and buyer count was lower than normal.

“Overall, it was a slow week in the auction lanes, and everything is still following the downward trend. The price of gas is also following a downward trend as well, declining for two consecutive weeks now for a national average price of $3.76/gallon,” Black Book went on to say.

On a volume-weighted basis, Black Book determined overall car segment prices decreased slightly less than the total market, dropping by 0.57%. That’s almost half what the decline was during the previous week when cars values decreased by 0.94%.

Analysts said all nine car segments decreased in value last week, with sub-compact cars leading the way with a drop of 1.66%.

Black Book noticed that prices for compact cars ticked only 0.07% lower, but analysts said that was likely due to the short auction week.

“All other car segments were consistent with prior weeks, but declines were just less than recent weeks,” Black Book said.

Over in the truck department, Black Book’s volume-weighted data showed overall truck values softened by 0.61%, with all 13 truck segments sustaining declines

Prices for minivan paced the price decreases among trucks, dropping by 1.29%.

Analysts pointed out the value decline of 0.62% posted by compact crossovers was the lowest weekly depreciation rate for the segment since the second week of July when the units declined by 0.43%.