IF THE car park is any indication, then this week’s Goffs Orby Yearling Sale is not going to be for the financially faint-hearted, an impression reinforced on arrival by a security guy overlooking the acres of Mercs, Beamers and Jags and sniffing “recession me arse”.

But it wasn’t just the ostentatious displays of horsepower outside the Kill sales ring that provoked a sense that Ireland’s most prestigious horse sale is operating in a different world from the rest of us.

Unlike the endemic gloom and doom afflicting most of the country, there was an almost palpable optimism reverberating throughout the stable blocks, partly due to having endured a couple of painful correction years in terms of too many horses being offered up for too little money, but more importantly, a big influx of overseas buyers who have already produced healthy sales results in France, Britain and America this year.

There may not have been a record-breaking sales topper yesterday and even the Goffs chief executive Henry Beeby described business as “steady without being spectacular”. But with the all-pervading uncertainty infecting most every other luxury industry in the world, that constitutes a result. And as always there is a demand for the really good stuff.

“Any nice horse that goes into that ring, there’s trade for it,” said local agent, Bobby O’Ryan.

By definition the Orby Sale deals in quality. Over 200 yearlings went through the ring yesterday, producing an average price in the region of €60,000.

Checking them all out were some of the most significant international players in the bloodstock world, including Sheikh Hamdan, the Dubai prince whose brother Sheikh Mohammed was represented by agent John Ferguson, as well as representatives of other regular buyers such as the venerable Englishman Robert Ogden.

The latter’s racing manager Barry Simpson had the final €300,000 bid on a Montjeu colt from the family of the Irish Guineas and Moyglare winner Tarascon that topped yesterday’s action.

“I’ve been here three days looking at horses and this is the nicest Montjeu I’ve seen,” Simpson said.

“He’s an attractive colt with a solid pedigree.”

Also present was racing’s newest major investor. Fahad Al Thani is a 22-year-old Prince of Qatar whose already deep passion for horses was probably ingrained for life by a first Group One success with Lightening Pearl in last weekend’s Cheveley Park Stakes at Newmarket.

Not surprisingly he doesn’t seem to want for company. In horsey terms a young enthusiast with vast reservoirs of money is catnip to the platoons of agents and vendors eager to make the most of their most important few days of the year.

But it was for a more established owner in Dr Jim Hay, in whose colours the 2009 and 2010 Irish Derby winners, Fame And Glory and Cape Blanco, now race, that North Of Ireland agent Steven Hillem went to €205,000 for a son of the all-conquering Coolmore stallion Galileo.

“It’s the first horse I’ve bought for Jim Hay and I said to the breeder you don’t come across a horse like this very often. He’s a smashing colt and I’m delighted to get him,” Hillem said.

There is no more established Goffs buyer than Sheikh Hamdan, whose association with Kill goes back decades to when he was buying top Group One performers such as Salsabil and Marju from Pat O’Kelly’s Kilcarn Stud. Both parties were present again yesterday and the Sheikh paid out €260,000 for a daughter of the 1991 Derby runner-up Marju.

“We have a fantastic history with Kilcarn which is a fabulous nursery. And this was an obvious one for us,” said Steven Collins of Sheikh Hamdan’s Shadwell organisation, which also paid €180,000 for a Teofilo colt early in the session.

“He has great size and substance about him for a May foal and he has a fantastic pedigree. It’s a stallion’s pedigree,” said Collins.

Securing a potential money-spinning stallion is the ultimate aim for the big players in the horse game and there are few hotter sires in Europe at the moment than Oasis Dream. A son of the Juddmonte stallion out of an In The Wings mare was bought by English agent Charlie Gordon-Watson for €200,000.

“He is a very straight-forward horse with a great look about him,” the buyer said. “And he is by a fantastic stallion.”