I’ve seen many different auctioneers come and go here in central Wisconsin. Mainly they go because of their age, not because they want to quit but because they just aren’t able to handle the hard work of conducting a sale any longer.
All Auctioneers seem to have their own styles, their own lingo, and their own way of dressing. The most common attire for an auctioneer in these parts would be a cowboy hat, but then again many wear a baseball cap, or nothing on their head unless the sun is shining. If they wear a cowboy hat they most often sport cowboy boots as well.
When we first started attending auctions back in the early 1980’s some of the first auctioneers I remember were short elderly men who’d been in the business for the long haul. They often wore felt fedora hats. And they were the best, my favorite. One time a little old man who’d probably been calling for sixty years I’d say, took a shining to me at an auction, me a young lady with long hair. I got right up to the front of the crowd next to the hay wagon he was standing on. Auctioneers almost always have their items strung out on hay wagons, whether the merchandise is in the tool line or the household line, doesn’t matter, it will all be piled up on a hay wagon. The higher the piles and the longer the stretch of hay wagons, the better I like them. Volume gives a better chance for something special to be hidden in the bottom of the pile, and if I stay there long enough there might be a treasure there that I can get with hardly anyone else noticing it.
So anyway, this elderly short little auctioneer, well he wanted to please me. He would start his chant when holding up a box of household merchandise at a quarter. It would go something like quarter dollar, quarter dollar, quarter dollar. And if I thought there were possibilities in that box, possibilities of some real bargains, I’d bid right quick flashing my arm up in the air and smiling at the auctioneer. And then he’d catch my bid and immediately say “sold”. I’d smile and retrieve my box of goodies and stand alert and ready for the next item that caught my eye. His call would start over again and I’d bid right quick and he’s say “sold” again. And I would jam the next box I’d won under the wagon in front of me. This kept up for several minutes and then the women surrounding me began hollering out, “Hey, I bid too.” And “hey, look over here once. I was bidding too.” But that little old auctioneer kept favoring me and giving me the bid. I bet I had a truckload that day of some really neat old items. And I don’t know why he singled me out. But it is a sale I won’t forget. I walked away with some really neat stuff that day.
Many auctioneers have a streak of comedy in them. One I remembered and liked a lot was named Joe. He never failed to take off his cowboy hat and place it over his heart when he was selling a religious item such as a print of “The Last Supper” or “Jesus”. He’d mumble something like bless the Lord. Whenever Joe sold a fancy vase he’d stop and call it a “vaz” and joke how valuable it might be. And he, too, like the little old auctioneer that took a shining to me, started his bidding with quarter dollars. Those days are long gone now.
Most items begin with bids at a dollar or at two-fifty. And if the initial bid doesn’t happen, they’ll sometimes pout and say if it isn’t worth that much leave it sit or put it in the jackpot pile. After everything is sold on a hay wagon, all the leftovers that no one would bid on are put into one large pile and called a jackpot. A lucky bidder can get the whole pile for little or nothing. And if you’re lucky someone might approach you with cash in hand and offer to buy one item out of your pile for more than you paid for the whole mess. Perhaps they missed the bid earlier or they didn’t want to deal with the jackpot pile.
There is a big difference in auctioneers as to how greedy they are too, perhaps it has to do with how they are paid. If they get a flat rate for stopping out they aren’t as worried about how much they can get for an item. If they get a percentage of the sale, then they are going to try harder to get the bigger price.
The call of each auctioneer varies greatly, perhaps it starts with the training they first received. I remember one fellow who always incorporated his wife’s name in his lingo, like “one betty two, two betty three. Then a few years later, unfortunately on his part,“Betty” left him. He was pretty lost and had to totally reinvent his method of calling out dollar amounts. It took several sales before he got back into the swing of it. Another auctioneer took forever to warm up with his cant, and for this reason mainly, we avoided going to his sales. He’d often start out with an “Alright here, alright here, alright here… that kept up for what seemed like hours before he’d begin asking for dollars. And this went on with each new item held up for sale.
An auctioneer’s temperament can vary too and make the mood of the sale. A greedy auctioneer will sell items in pairs and call out the rule that the price an item is sold for will be times two. So he’ll put up two shovels for instance, one with a broken handle and one that looks o.k., but if you have the winning bid of let’s say five dollars, you better make sure you understand that is five dollars times two, or ten dollars for the pair. It’s confusing when the auctioneer is speaking very fast, and I think many people get caught this way.
I’ve seen crabby auctioneers too. They don’t make you want to linger when they begin to pout if the bids are not going as high as they think they should. One time I saw an auctioneer literally yelling at the crowd because he was upset at how cheap things were going for. He was even singling regulars out by calling their names and saying things like, “Ray, come on now, don’t you realize how valuable this piece is. You paid twice for one like this just last week.” Or something like, “Frank, you dam tightwad, raise your hand now.” Those kind of sales made me want to slowly creep back to my vehicle and drive away.
Another category I’ll put some auctioneers I’ve seen into would be excitable ones. While holding up a box of seemingly non-exciting items, such as shoe polish, he’d look inside the box and holler out, “Oh my gosh, look what we have in here!” He’d be sure to get some peppy bidding every time he used this lingo, and you’d be sorely disappointed when you went through your items that you won. There wasn’t a darn thing to get excited about in that box.
One auctioneer I remember clearly was a large man with a huge black mole on his forearm. I swore it was skin cancer but I never approached him about it. I hope it wasn’t. He was fast and fair and got the best prices for anything he sold. He knew how to get the crowd moving and bidding and kept everyone’s interest. He was probably a man I would have hired to sell my own stuff but I didn’t get many bargains from attending his auctions.
Yes, I’ve seen all kinds of auctioneers, and the ones I liked best were the ones that smiled most often, moved quickly through the items, and didn’t seem to get mad if you got a great deal on something.
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