ATLANTA -

Turns out, there was more than one decades-long drought snapped for an Atlanta entity this past week.

Cox Automotive, headquartered in Georgia’s capital, said Friday that its Manheim Used Vehicle Value Index saw its first-ever non-seasonally adjusted October increase last month.

The index — which began in 1997, a year after the city’s Summer Olympics and two years after its previous World Series championship  — came in at 223.7 last month, a 38.1% year-over-year increase and a record high.

Wholesale prices were up 9.2% from September on a mix-, mileage- and seasonally adjusted basis, Cox Automotive said.

“Some of the monthly increase is a result of the seasonal adjustment, as October typically sees above-average vehicle depreciation and therefore used price declines,” the company said in a report. “This October was the first October in the history of the Manheim Index data, which dates to 1997, to see a non-seasonally adjusted price increase in October. The non-adjusted price increase in October was 5.4%.”

Like a baseball prognosticator at the All-Star break, October’s results took the Cox Automotive analysts by surprise.

In additional context shared via email, Cox Automotive chief economist Jonathan Smoke said: “The October results were surprising compared to our expectations in September. We had expected gains, but demand was much stronger throughout the month.

“October is normally a month that we see some of the least aggressive buying at wholesale by dealers because the used retail market is typically the slowest in the last months of the year,” Smoke said.

“The strongest months are always during tax refund season, so late fall usually represents the lull in the market before dealers begin to stock up for spring. Usually, the new market gets all of the retail attention in the fall because of new models being rolled out and old models being discounted,” he said. “That’s not the case this year as the production and supply chain problems have led to record low inventories and positioned the used market to be even stronger.”

Like the Braves regrouping at the deadline, car dealers may have to focus on trades.