LEXINGTON, KY – The Fasig-Tipton Kentucky October Yearling Sale, coming off a record-setting 2025 edition, kicks off its four-day run in Lexington Monday at 10 a.m. The October sale caps a yearling sales season which has seen records fall at all of its major stops and consignors are optimistic those trends will continue in Lexington this week.“I think there are still people who want horses,” said Tommy Eastham, whose Legacy Bloodstock will offer 36 yearlings at the October sale. “As a consignor, a lot of times I can tell how serious people are by the questions they ask me. And if those indicators hold true, I think we are going into another strong sale. I do think it's a very educated buying population. Vet reports that are a little complicated, I think are still going to be heavily penalized. But if you can get in there and get through all the hoops and the gauntlet of the sale grounds, I think it's going to be rewarding. It's nice to see these breeders getting rewarded.”Eastham said he was seeing buyers at every level at the Legacy Bloodstock barn this weekend.“Fasig does a good job at this particular sale of bringing multiple layers of buyers,” he said. “It's not all top end. It looked like there were people there for a really solid $25,000 horse and there were people for a really solid quarter-million dollar horse. So it's a diverse buying population, not everybody with the same business plan.”The 2025 October sale demolished its previous record, set just the year before, for total sales, with 1,103 yearlings grossing $72,071,000. The 2024 auction had a gross of $58,575,500. Last year's average of $65,491 and median of $30,000 were also records for the sale.“I've been doing this since the July sales were the biggest sales and were where the premier horses were, and now you see more buyers being active at the October sale,” Eastham said of the evolution of the final yearling sale of the year. “I think a lot of the horsemen just appreciate another month of development and the horse telling a little more of their story and what they are going to be as a mature horse. I think it's more of how people want to buy horses now. It's a little easier to prep them in October. I've always been amazed about how many good horses come out of the October sale compared to what their pedigrees will say, but I think the time helps. The October horses are a little bit more free range, a couple of bite marks on them, and it seems like to me, that turns into better race results.”Colin Brennan, who has 11 horses in his October consignment this year, thinks the auction has become more of destination auction for sellers and buyers alike.“Instead of being a Plan B sale, if you will, which I think it was three to five years ago, I think people are pointing to this sale now because it's so well attended,” he said. “I think there is a pretty good buying bench here and each year it seems like the averages are going up and the number of horses breaking the $100,000 and $200,000 mark are going up.”A series of record-setting yearling sales should mean buyers are still searching for horses this in the season, Brennan agreed.“We keep hearing pinhookers and people who shop the middle market weren't able to get horses bought at the earlier sales, or not enough of them bought, so they are still in the market,” he said. “And it seems, looking at the results of each sale, that that's still the case.”While figures for the yearling sales from July to October have been strong, Brennan was casting a wary eye towards the calendar's change to November in a couple of weeks.“I think we are going to see [the market] start to plateau here, just looking at pinhook numbers industry-wide this year for people who were doing weanling-to-yearlings,” Brennan said. “We all came to the realization that we overpaid for weanlings and that same money wasn't being appreciated as yearlings. So I think, definitely in the weanling-to-yearling market, I would expect this year's weanling sales to really be the beginning of the bubble, not popping, but shrinking.”Brennan continued, “Although we were all trying to buying that quality, we probably got caught overpaying for average horses that the market had driven up. The horses we were giving $125,000 for, honestly in hindsight, were probably worth $80,000. You obviously still have to have the quality and be selling into the upper echelon of the market, but there is no way we are all buying quality.”Hips one through 404 will be offered during Monday's first session of the October sale, followed by hips 405-808 Tuesday; hips 809-1,212 Wednesday; and hips 1,213-1,615 Thursday. Each session begins at 10 a.m.The post Fasig-Tipton October Sale Caps Yearling Sales Season appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.