Robert Frank tells the story behind last week’s record-making Ferrari sale. For Frank, it’s part of a broader tax valuation case in France,

Pierre Bardinon, born in 1931, was an heir to the Chapal family, a French leather and fur dynasty famed for making pilot bomber jackets. As a boy, Bardinon fell in love with cars and started buying old racing Ferraris in the 1960s, when few other collectors were interested in them. He went on to buy more than 70 rare Ferraris.

He turned the family chateau at Mas du Clos, near Aubusson, into a Ferrari playground, with a museum housing the cars, and a two-mile racetrack. […]

The Ferrari collection had dwindled to around 20 cars by 2012, as Mr. Bardinon sold them off. Yet their value has soared. […] Marcel Massini, a Geneva-based Ferrari historian who knew Mr. Bardinon and frequently inspected the collection, said the remaining cars in the Bardinon collection could be worth over $200 million. He said at least three of them could fetch over $30 million each in today’s market.

“These are like the Mona Lisas of the Ferrari world,” he said. “They are the best of the best.”

Revaluing Family Treasures for the Taxman (The New York Times)