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Early in the 19th century there was great opposition to the auctioneer and the auction method of marketing. Specifically, in 1828, a petition to Congress was signed by a number of New York merchants urging the government to impose heavy taxes on the auctioneer’s business, with a view on destroying the “auction method of sale” for good. At that time the New York Auctioneers dealt largely in imported goods, and they were charged with demoralizing the market along with other more or less heinous offenses. The auctioneers formulated a strong response in a memorial to Congress, which resulted in the auction profession not being taxed to death.
Auctioneers show no lack of self-confidence as they today boast such slogans as “Have Gavel Will Travel” and “We Sell The Earth & Everything On It”. But even a hundred years ago there were similar slogans, such as the Iowa auctioneer who advertised that he “makes sales of anything, anywhere this side of the Celestial realm”. Some auctioneers went so far as to prove their boasts.
Col. James Adolphus Benner, born in Chillicothe, Ohio on June 26, 1835, was said to have a pair of lungs of incredible power. Once, while selling a farm auction in Illinois he won a bet on the projection of his voice. As Mr. Benner put it, “I bet I could sell any article selected on a farm and could be understood two and one half miles off. The only stipulation was that I was to select the day, and they the article to be sold. I choose a mild day, with a gentle breeze from the south. The distance was measured off, and a spotted hog produced. I sold the hog alright, and won the bet, but say! I couldn’t speak above a whisper for a week.” Really? I doubt I could duplicate the feat with a sound system, and whom in the 21st century has the time to try? The only way today’s auctioneers can out distance Benner is by using the Internet!
If historically, “boasting” is a trait of the auctioneer, then we must also recognize the “action” in “transaction”. Auctioneers have conducted phenomenal transactions that no other sales method could match.
In the early 1900’s a cemetery was sold at auction to a Pennsylvania man who wished to utilize it as a private burial ground. The battlefield of Gaines Mill, near Cold Harbor, where Stonewall Jackson met the Union Army 1862 was sold at auction. The Basinstoke Canal in England, thirty-seven miles long with twenty-nine locks and annual revenue of $25,000 was offered for sale by auction in 1908. The entire village of Winthrop Harbor, near Zion City, Ill went under the hammer as one lot! A New Jersey man made a fortune selling chalk deposits found in the beds of the two ponds he bought at auction in 1908. A number of railroads have been sold at auction. Most notable was the government ordered auction/sale in 1898 of the Union Pacific Railroad, between Omaha and Ogden that fetched $58,000,000.
Even a hundred years ago auctioneers could boast of selling hundreds and even thousands of parcels of real estate at the rate of a parcel a minute. One Massachusetts auctioneer in 1909 utilized the “speeder plan” which he claimed his father invented. According to the plan outlined in a letter in the INTERNATIONAL AUCTIONEER (1909), “Bids are solicited alternately upon the plot as a whole and upon each parcel, and it is sold all together or in parts, whichever way it will bring the most money.”
I wonder if New York auctioneer T.F. Archer utilized the “speeder plan” at his Grand Auction Sale of 300 choice building lots in Queens, NYC on Tuesday May 30th, 1899. He offered all 300 lots at absolute auction without reserve to the highest bidders. His brochure boasted “These elegant lots to be sold are in the centre of improvements and are sure to increase in value; has churches of all denominations, schools, stores, hotels factories, &c., macadamized streets, electric lights and water supply.” What more could you ask for? I wish I could sell 300 lots at absolute auction in that neighborhood today!
Real estate auctions were considered a specialty in the past as they continue to be today. Specialization is not new. Many Auctioneers boasted of record auction sales in their area of expertise. There were auctioneers selling only fish, just books, exclusively coins and many other subjects hundreds of years ago. Fasig Tipton conducted Annual Horse Auctions at Madison Square Garden in NYC in the early 1900s; they are still in business today auctioning horses in Kentucky. In Australia and New Zealand wool was auctioned annually in the early 1900’s, as was the coffee crop of Sumatra.
Auctioneers can boast of a long history of selling real estate, livestock, tobacco, vehicles of all kinds, contents of businesses and homes, new merchandise, stocks, bonds, art, antiques, seized merchandise. In short, especially today, an auctioneer can boast that he or she can sell everything that someone owns in a day at a well-advertised auction with satisfactory results.
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