Golden Pal Filly Tops OBSOnline April Second Chance Sale at $50,000

Ken Ramsey gave OBSOnline’s April Second Chance sale its headline when he paid $50,000 for a dark bay or brown filly by Golden Pal, the auction topper in a market built for horses that missed the live ring but still had buyers circling.

The result mattered because it showed that a useful breeze still carries weight after the main auction dust settles. The filly had worked during the OBS Spring 2-Year-Olds in Training Sale, then re-entered the market through the Second Chance format after either scratching or failing to meet reserve in the live sale. By the time bidding opened at noon ET on April 24 and closed at noon on April 28, she had become the most expensive horse in the catalog.

OBS said the April Second Chance catalog included 28 horses, among them four Florida-breds. Eleven horses sold for a total of $316,500, good for an average of $28,773. That is not the kind of volume that changes the market on its own, but it does show there is a lane for juveniles who can point to a public workout and a current paper trail, even if they did not get cashed out the first time around.

Ramsey’s involvement gave the sale an added layer. The Kentucky owner-breeder has long been active in buying fillies with both racing upside and residual breeding value, and a daughter of Golden Pal fits that profile cleanly. Golden Pal, a dual Breeders’ Cup-winning sprinter standing at Ashford Stud, brings speed and immediate name recognition. BloodHorse lists his 2026 fee at $25,000 live foal, a benchmark that helps frame the value embedded in a well-bred filly by a freshman sire with market pull.

The broader context also helps explain why the second-pass market held up. OBS described its Spring 2-Year-Olds in Training Sale as record-setting, and Thoroughbred Daily News reported that the live auction finished with its highest-ever gross while average and median both rose from a year earlier. When the front-end market is that strong, it can leave room for horses that were not fully capitalized the first time to find another gear online.

OBS said it will stage another Second Chance auction after its June 16-18 June 2-Year-Olds and Horses of Racing Age Sale. For sellers, that makes the online format more than a cleanup exercise. For buyers like Ramsey, it is becoming a real place to find horses with speed, pedigree and one more chance to turn a breeze into a racehorse.