COE Price Records: How to Check Highs and Lows
Find a record with its category, exercise and coverage period, and avoid confusing the largest nominal premium with affordability or investment performance.
A COE record needs three labels: the category, the exercise and the period searched. “Highest ever” is a stronger claim than “highest in this year” or “highest among the records stored here”. Use the narrowest claim the evidence supports.
Locate the exercise, not just a headline
LTA publishes premium tables covering the original category era and later A–E categories. The site’s comparable archive begins with the modern-category period; earlier numbered categories should be checked in the original tables without inventing an A/B mapping.
Some useful dated checkpoints are Category A’s $2 in November 2008’s second exercise, $92,100 in January 2013’s first exercise, and $103,721 in April 2023’s second exercise. The last is the first recorded Category A crossing of $100,000. These are nominal auction premiums, not complete vehicle prices.
A record can be superseded within the same month
Category E reached $152,000 in the first October 2023 exercise, then $158,004 in the second. Describing $152,000 as the final record of that period overlooks the later round. Category A subsequently reached $133,009 in the first September 2026 exercise.
For a live record query, retain the date through which the records were available. Future imports can change the answer. Our results archive and charts allow inspection of the underlying observations.
Check the comparison basis
- Compare the same category definition.
- Separate an exercise maximum from a monthly or annual average.
- Do not fill suspended exercises with zero.
- State whether amounts are nominal or inflation-adjusted.
- Keep COE, total vehicle price and household income as separate measures.
What a record does not establish
The highest premium does not identify the wealth or motives of bidders. Nor does a later high create an investment return for an earlier COE holder: the entitlement is consumed over time. A car’s resale value depends on the complete vehicle and remaining validity.
For affordability, compare the deposit, financed cost and running expenses with your household budget. For historical context, show neighbouring results so a single unusual round does not stand in for an entire era.
Sources and review date
Reviewed on 13 September 2026. Historical results retain their exercise dates; worked budgets are assumptions, not quotations.