Fasig-Tipton November: What the Catalog Tells Us About Monday’s Market

Fasig-Tipton November has always been a sale where a small number of exceptional horses account for much of the money. Last year it grossed more than $100 million from one of the smallest catalogs of the past decade.

Monday’s offering is smaller still, at least among mares in foal and racing prospects. Weanlings now make up nearly half the horses cataloged.

Darley is also selling lifetime breeding rights in Breeders’ Cup Classic winner Sovereignty, who enters stud at $150,000, and in Knightsbridge, at $75,000, the first time it has offered rights at the sale, according to BloodHorse. A third right, in Nyquist, is also in the catalog.

I’ve been digging through the catalog, comparing it with nine years of Fasig-Tipton results and the current stallion-fee market. Three findings stood out.

1. The In-Foal Market Is Concentrating at the Top

There are just 46 mares in foal this year, the smallest offering in the ten November catalogs we’ve examined. Yet 22 carry covers by stallions whose advertised fees were $200,000 or more when the mares were bred. Last year, there were 19 such mares in a catalog of 60.

Almost half of this year’s in-foal offering carries a cover from that highest fee bracket, compared with roughly a third last year.

Figure 1 · In-foal covers by advertised fee

Almost half of this year’s mares in foal were covered at $200,000 or more

Show the data

Catalog	Mares in foal	$200,000 or more	$100,000 to $199,999	Under $100,000	No comparable fee	$200,000 or more, share of priced covers
2022	64	1	17	29	17	2.1%
2023	64	15	12	19	18	32.6%
2024	80	32	10	30	8	44.4%
2025	60	19	17	20	4	33.9%
2026	46	22	13	11	0	47.8%

Four stallions account for 25 of the 46 mares: Not This Time, Into Mischief, Gun Runner and Flightline.

Six of the covering sires have become more expensive since the matings were made, three of them by $50,000 or more. Gun Runner has moved from $250,000 to a 2027 fee advertised as Private and reported at $350,000, Not This Time from $250,000 to $300,000, and Nyquist from $175,000 to $225,000. Seventeen mares carry covers by those three stallions. Those pregnancies were established at last spring’s fees, and the same matings will cost more next year.

The mares have the records to match the covers. Twenty-five of the 46 are stakes winners, another eight have produced stakes winners, and nineteen are carrying their first foal.

Fourteen of those maiden mares won stakes themselves. They’re young racemares transitioning into breeding careers, many carrying foals by Kentucky’s leading commercial stallions.

That profile has sold well here. Over the past three November sales, mares in foal aged five or younger sold for a $650,000 median, compared with $380,000 for mares aged six through nine. A buyer of one of these mares gets a race record, a commercial mating and her producing years ahead, with no produce record yet to judge her by.

2. The Weanling Book Is Cheaper, Deeper at the Top and Born Early

This year’s 105 weanlings were conceived at a median stud fee of $30,000, the lowest in four years. At the other end, fifteen were conceived at fees of at least $150,000, the largest group in that same period.

That top tier is mostly fillies. Eleven of the original fifteen are fillies, and eight of the nine remaining after Sunday’s recorded withdrawals are female. That group appeals to breeders building a broodmare band as much as to pinhookers.

Nearly 46% of Fasig-Tipton November’s weanlings were born in January or February. At Keeneland November, which has a much larger offering from the same foal crop, the figure is 35%. This year’s selection favors early foals, which makes sense when weanlings are judged largely on physical development.

Once they are in the catalog, the foaling month has made little difference to price. Over the previous three November sales, January and February foals sold for a $150,000 median. March foals brought exactly the same median, and April foals were close at $140,000.

An early birthday helps a weanling into this sale. Once it is in, buyers price the individual, the pedigree and the commercial prospects.

3. The First-Crop Premium Disappears at the Same Fee

Thirty-nine of this year’s 105 weanlings, 37%, are by first-crop sires.

Nearly every stallion in that group has already been repriced. Of the fourteen with announced fees for 2027, thirteen have been reduced. Prince of Monaco has moved from $30,000 at conception to $15,000, Domestic Product from $30,000 to $20,000, and Dornoch from $40,000 to $20,000.

This happens every year. Of the 169 first-crop weanlings cataloged at this sale since 2023, none was by a sire whose fee had increased for the following season.

On the raw numbers, first-crop weanlings have returned more on their conception fees. From 2023 through 2025, those that sold brought a median 4.3 times their original stud fee, compared with 3.2 times for weanlings by established sires. That looks like a first-crop premium.

We ran the comparison again with both groups restricted to conception fees below $50,000. First-crop sires came out at 4.4 times and established sires at 4.5 times.

Figure 2 · Price as a multiple of conception fee

At the same fee, first-crop weanlings returned no more than those by established sires

Show the data

Conception fee	Sire	Sold	Median multiple
All conception fees	First-crop sires	75	4.3
All conception fees	Established sires	123	3.2
Conception fee under $50,000	First-crop sires	51	4.4
Conception fee under $50,000	Established sires	64	4.5

First-crop sires tend to stand at lower fees, where a good weanling sale produces a large multiple of a small fee. Compared at the same fee level, the advantage is gone.

The fee cut also counts for less than the original mating. In a model of 198 completed weanling sales from the past three Novembers, the conception fee carried considerably more weight in the sale price than the stallion’s newly announced fee. Buyers were still paying for the original mating after the farms had cut the fee.

Monday’s 31 first-crop weanlings will show whether that still holds.

What I’ll Be Watching Monday

Racing and broodmare prospects have generated the largest share of the sale’s gross in each of the last nine years. Their ring clearance has fallen from 89.4% in 2021 to 65.5% last year, while the median for those that sold reached $775,000. Buyers have paid up for the prospects they want and let more go home unsold.

The weanling market has behaved differently. Last year, just 73 were offered, and 91.8% sold in the ring at a $180,000 median. Both figures were the highest in our nine-year series.

This year, 83 weanlings remained in the catalog as of the November 1 update, including 31 by first-crop sires and a larger group of fillies from expensive matings.

I’ll be watching whether the larger weanling offering can hold last year’s clearance and median, and what buyers pay for the mares carrying the expensive covers that now dominate the in-foal book.

The historical comparisons, fee data and catalog analysis are on our Fasig-Tipton November data page, and we’ll score these benchmarks against the results after the sale.

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Corrections. Every figure in this piece was checked against its source, and an error is still possible. If you find one, let me know through our contact form or @TB_Intel on X, and I’ll correct it quickly.