I went to an auction today for the first time. I've been to dumb auctions where they were selling off five pieces of farm equipment in a crowd of 20 people, but this was different. This was an estate sale in an auction house with a crowd of about 100. There was everything from dishes, china, antiques, furniture and linens, to lawn and garden tools, a snowblower, a lawn mower, etc.
It was interesting to see which items went for what. Let me tell you, a Saturday morning bidding war over a leaf blower is actually really exciting. People take these things seriously. Complete sets of china went for $12 (my mom got one) and a really ugly serving platter went for $120. Insane.
I didn't care about most of this stuff. I spent a good portion of the first hour in awe of the auctioneer, though, thinking about the direct relation between rhythm and the art of being an auctioneer. It was almost musical, listening to this guy. He had a very specific tone and timbre. When the bidding went up, so did his pitch. When the bidding was low the rhythm of his words almost hypnotized you into action. It was amazing to watch, for someone like myself who's a nerd and notes those types of things.
Anyway, I bought things. Books. Really old books. All of them for $20 total.
Here's the list:
- Tennyson's Poetical Works (pub. 1899)
- Scott's Poetical Works (pub. 1913)
- The Complete Works of Shakespeare (pub. 1911)
- Early Tudor Poetry (pub. 1920)
- Pemaquid Point and Other Poems by Melville Arthur Shafer (pub. 1941)
- Tennyson's The Princess (pub. 1904)
- Caesar's Gallic War (pub. 1897)
- Freytag's Soll und Haben (pub. 1902 and printed completely in German)
I'd like to go to more auctions, but I know it'd just mean bad things for my bank account and good things for my book collection.
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