It’s hard to find angles when betting on 2-year-old races or maiden races with lots of first-time starters. These types of races often have large fields and can really jam up a horseplayer trying to beat a horizontal wager like a Pick 4 or Pick 6 without a lot of money to spread deep in a 12-horse race that feels like a lottery.

In situations like this, any kind of angle can help. And I’m usually willing to turn to anything to make my decision in these low-information races. I’ve discussed betting on first time starters in this space before, but today I want to talk about a different angle I use when handicapping these races - the auction price.

If a horse is sold at public auction, the price the horse was purchased for is listed in the past performances along with the date and location of the sale. With first-time starters or horses making their second or third start, this information can really help. It provides some possible insight into the thinking of the horse’s connections, and can sometimes help you lean closer in one horse’s direction or another.

I’ve discussed before how a horse running in a maiden claiming race that is lower than the auction price is a good reason to pass on the horse. But what does the auction price tell us when a horse is starting out in a maiden special weight race? Not much all by itself. But it could help to compare the relative values of the other horses in the race that were also purchased at auction. Sometimes, you’ll find that one horse stands above all the others in this department. You could have several first-time starters who were purchased for $15,000 and a single entry who was purchased for more than $100,000. If that expensive horse was shipped in from out of town for the race, all the better.

Auction price is one factor to consider. (Eclipse Sportswire)

Does more expensive mean better? Certainly not. In fact, the most expensive horse ever sold at auction, The Green Monkey, went for $16 million in 2006 and was retired after failing to break his maiden in three tries. But people don’t pay big money for a horse they think is going to lose. And there are a lot of people involved in setting a horse’s auction price. Often a deep-pocketed buyer will have a team evaluating the horses for sale at any given auction, looking for things like pedigree, physical conformation, temperament. If a horse is bought at auction as a 2-year-old in training, they are also looking at workouts to see how the horse performs. These professionals help buyers put their money behind the horses they think show the most promise. And if a horse goes at auction for a really big number — for hundreds of thousands up to millions of dollars — then that means that more than one team of professionals was interested in the horse. There were multiple bidders fighting over it. That gives me even more confidence that the horse has something good going for it.

Some trainers don’t expect their best horses to fire in their first race. Some are known to want to give the horse a race to get a feel for the track. This, too, is information available in past performances. If you see a horse with a big auction price who may not have fared well in its debut, but the trainer shows a decent percentage with horses in their second start, then the value might be even better on the toteboard than you maybe had for the first start.

Horses don’t have to have blockbuster auction prices to deserve your attention, either. Another important thing to pay attention to is the sire’s stud fee, listed next to the sire’s name in the past performances. If the auction price was a large multiple of the stud fee, that’s worth noting. It’s not so unusual to see a horse that sells at auction for three or four times the stud fee. Anything over that is interesting. When this multiple gets really high, say ten or even twenty times the stud fee, then that’s really interesting. That means that someone saw value in this horse beyond pedigree. Again, if the horse was sold at auction recently, as a 2-year-old in training for example, then someone saw the horse do something impressive.

All of this only matters if the horse’s auction price, and whatever you find interesting about it, allows it to stand out from the field. And even then, it’s rarely worth it to single or key a horse based on auction price alone. The auction price is the product of a market, and an imperfect one at that. It isn’t always a reliable metric. But in these spots where every angle helps, this is one I often find myself considering.