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Going to an auction is a lot like watching a major league
baseball game. The whole experience is much more enjoyable
and productive if you first know -- and thoroughly understand
-- how the game is played. So, here’s the lineup, the
windup and the first pitch.
“Who’ll give me a thousand dollar bill to go?”
barks the auctioneer.
You are the batter, standing alone at the plate. Keeping
your eye -- and ear -- on the ball, you wait for the perfect
pitch.
“Five hundred, then. Let’s go!”
The person throwing the ball is the auctioneer. Pitches usually
come hard and fast, right down the middle of the strike zone.
But be on guard for the occasional slider, change-up or curve
ball. You don’t want to swing at anything high and outside,
or you will quickly end up bidding much more than maybe you
had to.
Remember, it’s not the auctioneer’s job to load
you up with a lot of bargains. Auctioneers work on commission.
The more money they get for an item, the more money they make.
“Two-fifty! Folks, it’s worth four times that!”
Because auctioneers can’t see or hear everything and
everyone from the podium, they often have helpers called ringmen.
Like infielders, ringmen cover all of the bases and runners.
“I got a hundred!” yells a ringman from one side
of the crowd.
“Two!” shouts another from the other side.
“I got two. Two-fifty. Now three. Now four. Five, five,
five,” chants the auctioneer.
Quietly taking it all in, like the umpire behind home plate,
is the clerk. Instead of calling balls and strikes, the clerk
writes down the final bid and the bidder’s number.
“Six-fifty. Now seven. Now eight.”
And then there are the other bidders. Think of them as outfielders,
the spoilers on the opposing team. Blink, wait a split second
too long and they can -- and will -- reach a gloved hand over
the outfield wall and turn your guaranteed home run into an
instant out.
“I got nine. Nine-fifty. Now 10. Ten hundred. Who’ll
gimme eleven? Eleven once? Eleven twice? All done? Sold!”
There are basically three rules at any auction: “Know
what you’re doing. Know when to bid. Know what you’re
bidding on.” Price is largely determined by just three
factors: Condition, condition, condition. So says the man
who has sold thousands of auctions over a 55-year career,
everything from farm equipment and farms to antiques, businesses,
auto garages, contractors, dairy cattle, race horses, livestock
of all kinds, machinery and machinery dealerships, household
auctions and estate auctions.
His name is Donald Lee DeVault. He is my 82-year-old father.
And since I was a little child I’ve marveled at how
he could consistently ask an opening price that was about
the real worth of an item, drop down to where people start
bidding and then work the bid right back to where he began
-- and often beyond. He is exactly the kind of auctioneer
I would want to sell my auction: Extremely knowledgeable,
painfully honest and tirelessly hard-working.
“I try to get everything I can get for the seller,”
Dad explains. That may be one of the reasons he was asked
to sell the Junior 4-H cattle auctions for decades at the
Delaware County Fair in my hometown of Delaware, Ohio.
It’s also what cost Dad his first auction job after
just five months at the stockyards in Marion, Ohio. One of
the biggest meat packers in the area was used to buying cattle
as cheaply as possible. Then this new auctioneer showed up.
“I made him pay more than he felt he needed to pay,”
Dad recalls. The buyer complained to the boss: “Hey,
I can’t make any money off of that DeVault.” Rather
than get fired, Dad quit.
“You absolutely can’t play favorites and this
guy wanted to play favorites. He was buying fat, finished
cattle. He just thought I hung on too long. Somebody else
got them and he started bellyaching.”
Getting the most for your money
(a.k.a. How to keep the wool out of your eyes)
Here is some of Dad’s advice on how to get the best
buys at an auction:
“For a person who has never been to a sale, go
with someone who has been to a few auctions before.
Then just kind of stand back until the bidding gets started,
see who is doing what.” Or, as Yogi Berra once put it,
“You can observe a lot by watching.”
Dad agrees. “Basically, if people know what they want,
have some idea of its value and pay attention to what is said,
they can get some good buys at an auction. Representation
means a lot. Listen to what the auctioneer says about the
condition of the item for sale, its age, what’s been
done to it, how it works or doesn’t work.”
The first step toward any auction is to register at the cashier’s
office. You will be asked for identification, usually a driver’s
license, and assigned a bidder’s number that is printed
on a big cardboard card. Don’t lose the card. That number
is the only way the auction clerk has of keeping track of
what you buy.
Bring money. Cash still makes
no enemies. Checks are another matter, which is why some auctioneers
insist on a recent letter from your bank. To solve that headache,
credit cards are being accepted at more and more auctions.
Each sale begins with the auctioneer saying a little bit
about the owner, the reasons for the auction and the overall
condition of the items for sale. Then there are the terms
of sale. “What you see is what you get. You buy it where
it is, as is.” Finally, there are warnings against writing
bad checks and stealing, both of which are common problems
at any auction. “If you write a bad check or or steal
anything, we WILL prosecute you to the fullest extent of the
law,” is how Dad usually put it. Other auctioneers are
less gentlemanly. At an auction in Delaware state a few years
ago, one auctioneer brandished a baseball bat. He threatened
to beat thieves with it, then call the police and maybe an
ambulance. It figures. That was an annual farm machinery consignment
auction.
Bidding -- “If you know what you’re doing, sometimes
you can start the bidding.” Dad’s emphasis is
on “sometimes.” It’s
usually not a good idea to be the opening bidder. “If
you’re willing to bid a thousand, don’t give a
thousand. Go a couple of hundred. Follow the chant. Learn
to know what they’re saying. The main thing you want
to listen to is the number. Ignore the filler between the
numbers. If you’re certain that you want to buy an item,
you definitely have to be the last bidder,” he says
Know about what you want -- and what
you want to pay. With livestock, learn all you can
about breeding before you ever make a bid. If you’re
in the market for a tractor and other machinery, do your homework
first. Check out new and used prices. Evaluate the condition
of tires, sheet metal and how the engine runs. Look at the
number of hours on the engine. Calculate what you might have
to spend on repairs.
Know your competition. “At
a farm auction, there are apt to be a lot of machinery dealers.
They don’t necessarily want everybody to know what they’re
bidding on. They’ll wink or wiggle a finger, have a
hand on their hat or take their hat off to signal a bid. It’s
pretty hard to know about some of these things, especially
when you have two or three ringmen working the sale.”
Know your auctioneer. “Every auctioneer is a little
different. It pays to know a little bit about your auctioneer.
Look for an auctioneer who is known
for honesty and forthrightness. If it’s a local
person, a lot of people probably already know what the auctioneer
is like. If not, ask around,” Dad says. “Some
auctioneers joke around and some won’t. A little humor
goes a long way. A lot of people go to auctions for entertainment.
If you keep people in a jovial mood they will spend more money,
usually. Not always. We always tried to have a good time with
people.”
Make a habit of reading auction
notices in the daily newspaper or regional farm papers
and magazines. Keep an eye out for the logos of local or favorite
auctioneers. Cardboard sale bills that were once a common
site on rural telephone poles and in feed stores have largely
been replaced by the internet. Today, most auctioneers have
websites that often include photographs and detailed descriptions
of major items coming up for sale. Another good guide for
your bidding is Dad’s favorite TV program, “Antique
Roadshow,” the most popular program on public television.
Since auctions don’t deliver, come
prepared to haul home whatever you’re likely to buy.
Don’t count on meeting some kind soul with a big heart
and an empty pickup truck or trailer. Remember, once you buy
an item, it’s yours. So, depending on its size and portability,
keep an eye on it until it is paid for and safely in your
vehicle.
Be somewhat wary of consignment
auctions, since they consist of things that people
just want to get rid of. You can get some good buys on new
items at consignment sales, though. I once bought a brand
new John Deere 550 rotary tiller at an out-of-state consignment
sale -- for about half the new price. The tiller had sat on
the dealer’s lot for three years because its 50-inch
width was too small. Landscapers and farmers all wanted 60-inch
tillers. The dealer finally just got tired of looking at it.
Estate auctions, on the other hand, always bring out a good
crowd -- even in the middle of haying season.
Lastly, don’t count on bad
weather to keep the crowds away and the bidding low.
In more than half a century of selling auctions, Dad only
had to cancel a handful of sales due to ice storms or blizzards.
“Weather is not the factor one would think.” If
anything, he adds, bad weather brings more people to an auction
because they figure everyone else will stay home where it’s
warm and dry.
Yes, auctions really are a lot like basball, Yogi-isms and
all: “If people don’t want to come out to the
ballpark, nobody’s going to stop them. When you come
to a fork in the road ... Take it. It ain’t over ‘til
it’s over.” 
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