December 23, 2024 | Market Insights from Bob McConkey
2024 is coming to an end.
As we reflect (as we often do this time of year), we at MAG are grateful for the many friendships and relationships our business pursuits provide for us all.
The car business is special. It is hard work. It is in constant flux, each day bringing new challenges and opportunities. This business is full of good, hard-working people! At the heart of anything worth doing are relationships and trust. Without these two key ingredients, life lacks any purpose.
As we move toward 2025, we want to thank each of you for your trust. We are committed to what we do and feel responsible for doing all we can each day to continue earning your trust.
Meanwhile, we have a new baby — DAA Portland! We are excited to add this location to our Pacific Northwest strategy. Our first sale was successful, offering 750 units last Thursday and selling 425. The dealers of the Portland market welcomed us with open arms and a level of trust that we had not yet earned. We are committed to earning trust while building longstanding relationships in our new Portland market.
I’m including a document below that I have included in past year-end messages. It was written in 1962 by CBS News Anchor Harry Reasoner, who closed his Christmas Eve newscast with it. It is my favorite reminder of Christmas.
Merry Christmas to all, and to all, a good night.
Bob McConkey
President,
McConkey Auction Group
Christmas – By Harry Reasoner
The basis for this tremendous annual burst of gift buying and parties and near hysteria is a quiet event that Christians believe actually happened a long time ago. You can say that in all societies, there has always been a midwinter festival and that many of the trappings of our Christmas are almost violently pagan, but you come back to the central fact of the day and quietness of Christmas morning, the birth, of God, on earth.
It leaves you only three ways of accepting Christmas. One is cynically, as a time to make money or endorse the making of it. The second is graciously, the appropriate attitude for non-Christians, who wish their fellow citizens all the joys to which their beliefs entitle them. And the third, of course, is reverently. If this is the anniversary of the appearance of the Lord of the universe, in the form of a helpless babe – it is a very important day.
It’s a startling idea, of course. My guess is that the whole story that God selected a virgin to bear his Son, as a way of showing His love and concern for man is not an idea that has been popular with theologians. It’s a somewhat illogical idea, and theologians like logic almost as much as they like God. It’s so revolutionary a thought that it probably could only come from a God that is beyond logic and beyond theology.
It has a magnificent appeal; almost nobody has seen God, and almost nobody has any real idea of what he is like. And the truth is that among men, the idea of seeing God suddenly and standing in a very bright light is not necessarily a completely comforting and appealing idea. But everyone has seen babies, and most people like them.
If God wanted to be loved as well as feared, he moved correctly here. If He wanted to know his people as well as rule them, He moved correctly here, for a baby growing up learns all about people. If God wanted to be intimately a part of man, he moved correctly, for the experience of birth and family-hood is our most intimate and precious experience.
So, it comes beyond logic. It is either all falsehood, or it is the truest thing in the world. It’s the story of the great innocence of God the baby. God in the form of man, and has such a dramatic shock toward the heart that if it is not true, for Christians, nothing is true.
So, if a Christian is touched only once a year, the touching is still worth it, and maybe on some given Christmas, some final quiet morning, the touch will take.