Adventures at the Auction: The Ultimate Guide to Buying and Selling at Auction--in Person and Online - Leslie Hindman

1 Types of Auctions Virtually every auction house and the companies that run auctions have their own personalities and cultures. The most prestigious auction houses appear, at first glance, to be hush-toned galleries rather than bustling marketplaces. Walking into Christie's at Rockefeller Center in New York City is like walking into a high-class yet rather bland-looking law firm. Everyone struts around exuding efficiency. Fit young men in well-tailored suits and preppy-looking women crisscross the lobby carrying catalogs, escorting rich collectors and hoping-to-be-rich consignors through the premises. Gold-framed portraits line the walls, a landscape perches on a nearby easel, and in the distance, in one of the many exhibition galleries, an assortment of American furniture and silver presents as fine a display as you would see in the museums of many cities. No one speaks above a whisper. And yet, denim-clad customers still appear, a collector might occasionally lie on his back inspecting a chest-on-chest at a presale exhibition, and huge crowds can sometimes overflow into hallways and beyond during the actual auction. Auction houses, by their very nature--that is, the kind of business they're in--have to be somewhat relaxed. After all, they are, in a way, stores. In the United States, by far the most common type of auction is the English, or open outcry, auction. Here, the bidding starts at or below what the consignor is willing to sell an object for and increases as interested bidders vie to outbid one another. The bidding stops when the last person standing, so to speak, is the only person remaining who thinks the object is worth the price, whether it is $50, $100, $1,000, $1,000,000, or more. Bidders usually raise numbered paddles or cards to indicate their bids. At country auctions, bidders sometimes still shout out their bids for all to hear. Dutch auctions are far less common today than in the past. Dutch auctions are the opposite of the English auction: instead of starting with the low bid and working up, the auctioneer starts the bidding at a high price and keeps dropping it until someone bites--that is, until someone in the audience is willing to pay. In a Dutch auction, the winner is the only actual bidder, which makes the process especially tricky. You absolutely have to know what you are willing to pay for an object in order to participate. There are no second chances as there are in ascending-price auctions. The other types of auctions are rarely practiced today. There is the Japanese hand-sign auction, in which hand signals, similar to American Sign Language, but indicating prices not words or letters, are placed simultaneously. In the ancient Chinese handshake-auction bidders shake the hand of the auctioneer, indicating a bid by squeezing the auctioneer's fingers in such a way as to indicate the amount. The winner's name is subsequently called out by the auctioneer. By far my favorite type of exotic auction is the charming lighted-candle type. This is an old English way to conduct a sale in which the auctioneer lights a small candle just as the bidding begins. The bidding continues as the candle burns and the flame flickers. Whatever bid stands the moment the flame gutters out is the winning bid. Auction House Types At the high end of the auction house world are Christie's and Sotheby's, both of which are huge international corporations with branches in New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago and salesrooms or offices in many other cities around the world, from places you would expect--Paris and London, for instance--to some you might not, such as Reykjavik, Tel Aviv, and Shanghai. Actually, this shouldn't necessarily be that surprising. In my travels, I've attended auctions in Vietnam, Zanzibar, and Tanzania, among other places, which just proves that where there is property to be sold, auctions will be found. Christie's and SothebyHindman, Leslie is the author of 'Adventures at the Auction: The Ultimate Guide to Buying and Selling at Auction--in Person and Online - Leslie Hindman' with ISBN 9780609808191 and ISBN 0609808192.