The Hartley/De Renzo Thoroughbreds consignment is one of the stalwarts of the 2-year-old auction market, buying yearlings to sell as juveniles, but the partnership saw a massive resale in a different arena on Tuesday when a Tapit colt bought as a weanling for $275,000 sold for $1.2 million at the Fasig-Tipton Saratoga Select Yearling Sale.
The weanling-to-yearling pinhook market is not a new endeavor for Florida-based Randy Hartley and Dean De Renzo, but participating at the seven-figure level in that sector is somewhat uncharted territory.
“We've always done some weanlings to yearlings, never really at the level that we're getting into now,” Hartley said. “Before, it was a $100,000 weanling, and we're trying to flip them for $300,000, stuff like that, but we wanted to start playing at the upper end.
“It's riskier, but it's safer, because that seems to be what the people want, is those kind of horses,” he continued. “We're in a bit of a position this year where we felt like we could stretch on some of these horses, and get the best weanlings we could get that were offered for sale at auction. It's a lot of work and it's a lot of risk, but we've been doing it for a while.”
The horse that took them there was Hip 129, a Tapit colt out of the Tiznow mare Plenty O'Toole who sold to Mandy Pope's Whisper Hill Farm. The chestnut colt is a half-brother to multiple Grade 3 winner Mr. Money from the family of Grade 1 winners Well Armed and Cyberknife. Taylor Made Sales consigned the colt, as agent.
Hartley and De Renzo purchased the colt out of Book 1 of last year's Keeneland November Breeding Stock Sale, from the Gainesway consignment. They signed the ticket as AAA Thoroughbreds, named after De Renzo's granddaughters: Alexandra, Addison, and Ainsley.
“When we saw him, we just loved him,” Hartley said. “He was a little immature when we bought him, but he just kept blossoming and blossoming, and he's just a super cool horse. He's just like you'd want one to be made. He had a huge hip and a really good mind on him. We're tickled that Mandy got him.
“Dean, all along, it was his favorite colt,” he continued. “We had some others that we paid a little more for, but he was just always super. When we bought him, I thought we got a good bargain on the colt, to be honest, with his pedigree. Even though he's a little immature, you could see the frame in the colt. I thought at that time that we got a good buy on the colt.”
Hartley and De Renzo had three yearlings consigned to the Fasig-Tipton Saratoga sale, and Hartley said they planned to have seven total yearlings sell over the course of the season. Two of their Saratoga offerings sold in the ring, while the third was sold privately.
Hartley was mindful of the skepticism that shoppers might have of a primarily 2-year-old consignor selling stock before their trademark season, especially among fellow pinhookers. A horse sold early might be perceived as a cull, but Hartley said deciding on which yearlings to sell and which ones to train comes down to maintaining liquidity and taking advantage of a quality offering when it presents itself.
“Just selling 2-year-olds is kind of tough, because the 2-year-old market can be so up and down,” he said. “You have not such a good year, then you have to go back and reinvest, and wait a whole other season to sell them. It's a long time before you start getting income, so this is like getting income for us twice a year, instead of once a year.”
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If you appreciate our work, you can support us by subscribing to our Patreon stream. Learn more.The 2-year-old sales are the Hartley/De Renzo operation's bread and butter, but Hartley said selling in the yearling market brings with it plenty of advantages.
“With the babies, you don't do as much,” he said. “We don't do a lot with them at the farm. We just walk them, and that's it.
“With the yearling market, you have so many more buyers,” he continued. “You get to the 2-year-old market and have a really good horse, and you're down to two or three people trying to buy your horse, where if you come here and have a really good colt, you might have seven people. A lot more people want to buy yearlings. The 2-year-old market, yes you can maybe hit a bigger home run if everything works :20 and whatever, but it's so much riskier because so much stuff can happen, and it's a lot more pressure on me, where the yearlings, it's not as much pressure.”
Though Tuesday's session was a big night on the selling front, Hartley and De Renzo also came to Saratoga Springs, N.Y., to shop.
Shortly before selling their seven-figure colt, Hartley and De Renzo bought Hip 122, a Not This Time colt, for $900,000.
It might have been time to reap, but it was also time to sow for next year's juvenile sales.
“The second dam was a Forest Wildcat, and we just had so much success with Forest Wildcat that he just looked like some of the really good ones that we've had, and Not This Time was such a well-received stallion,” Hartley said. “A lot of leg, May foal, and he just looked like he'd develop into a really super horse.”
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