A couple of weeks ago I was in the audience for a live auction. It was at a fundraising event and the bids weren’t sky-high, but nevertheless I stood frozen to the spot trying not to move a muscle, terrified in case a raised eyebrow or an accidental jerk of the head left me on the hook for a set of antique steak knives.
I made no bids myself but I was impressed by the work of the fast-talking auctioneer. On the way out I picked up one of her cards: “Mary Hartley – Realtor and Apprentice Auctioneer.”
How do you become an auctioneer, I wondered? I arranged to meet Mary at her office in Ashland to find out.
I told her how worried I’d been about making an accidental bid with a twitch or a scratch at the wrong moment.
“Well, exactly,” she laughed, “don’t wave at anyone! That fundraiser was a fun one, but at something like the Akron Auto Auction, it’s pretty serious. Don’t blink or wink and be careful not to sneeze!”
So why all the subtle moves and gestures?
“When you have professional buyers, they don’t necessarily want the competitors to see who’s bidding,” Mary explained.
But isn’t it very easy to make a mistake?
“That doesn’t really happen with the professionals. At the chattel auctions it’s more common, but you can usually tell right away by the look on someone’s face. You try to make it funny, back up and keep it moving.”
Mary works for HER Realtors and RES Auction Services and has been conducting auctions as an apprentice for the past year.
“And before that, I worked on the back end of auctions for 10 years,” she told me.
“Real estate’s the big one,” she continued. “Also farmland. Then there’s chattel auctions – possessions – household items, guns, whatever it might be.”
With real estate, is it typically foreclosures that are being auctioned off?
“Not necessarily,” Mary explained. “It may be that an auction is just the best way to get a good sale price. With no list price, there’s no limit.”
Do the auctions take place at the house itself?
“If it’s a house it would be there. If it’s chattels without the house, that might be somewhere like the fairgrounds.
“A real estate auction from start to finish will be about 20 minutes. Chattel can go on for 3 or 4 hours, so you might want to split those up. You don’t want to exhaust your bidders, and you don’t want the crowd to thin out, either.”
What happens if a sale is made and the bidder changes their mind?
“You can’t back out,” Mary told me. “There are announcements made beforehand making it clear and you really can’t change your mind – it’s yours. Even if it’s a $150 couch. For a big item you might get taken to court.
“As an auctioneer, you have a responsibility to the seller.”
So how do you apprentice as an auctioneer?
“You go to auctioneer school,” Mary told me. “You take a written test – it covers the law, ethics and just common sense. You take a test to get your apprentice license and another to get your full license.
“That’s how it is in Ohio, anyway,” she said. “We’re quite a strict state in that regard. In Indiana it’s just the one test. In Missouri, you can just wake up one morning and decide you want to be an auctioneer.”
Mary explained that apprentices are assigned an experienced auctioneer as a mentor.
“I’m apprenticed to Andy White,” she told me, “he’s the second Triple Crown winner.”
This means Andy is only the second auctioneer in history to win all three major auctioneering contests: the International Auctioneer Championship, the World Automobile Auctioneer Championship and the World Livestock Auctioneer Championship.
“Andy’s a very good formal coach,” Mary continued. “He watches me at auctions and provides feedback and he’s helped me develop my ‘chant.’ He records my voice and critiques it.
“Then I practice all the time. Anywhere. All the time in my vehicle. And you soon start to realize you’re using muscles you don’t normally use.
“My family get to hear it a lot. I do the practice tongue twisters with my younger children, like ‘rubber baby buggy bumper.’ They drive their father crazy with it!”
There’s a definite musicality to an auctioneer’s performance. If you’ve ever seen the videos with funky drum beats added to the auctioneer’s patter you’ll know exactly what I mean.
“It’s a real performance, isn’t it?” I said. “You need to be clear and accurate but at the same time you need to generate excitement.”
“That’s right,” Mary replied, “Andy says the best auctioneers sing a song. You want there to be a good competitive energy in the air. You miss that with an online auction.”
Think you could be an auctioneer? Find out more at www.theohioauctionschool.com.
