On Sunday, I did something that I've wanted to do for ages, but never got around to. I went to a live auction. It was an estate auction at Clars in Berkeley of all sorts of objects ranging from oil paintings, antique furniture, Persian rugs, crystal chandeliers, grandfather clocks, china sets, musical instruments, old bottles of wine, even a 2000 Ford Mustang. I didn't buy anything but it was fascinating all the same just to be there in the room and watch how the auction proceeded.

There were maybe a hundred people in the room who slowly moved around the warehouse as different objects were put on the block. The auctioneer, Reg, who owns the place too, either sold items from the stage or from a portable dias so he could see the objects and all the bidders. At the same time, bidders were coming over the internet on an eBay property called Live Auctioneers (you can see this auction here) and there were Clars employees with cellphones handling interested parties who wanted to bid, but couldn't be there on site. The whole scene reminded me of Red Violin, but on a much, much smaller scale.

Some of the people in attendenace were dealers looking for cheap buys for the shop. Some were people just collecting for their homes. Many, like me, were just there to watch. Everyone had a small yellow piece of paper with their bidder number. Mine stayed in my pocket the whole time.

The one thing that I was interested in was a 3 foot ceramic sculpture of a samurai by someone named Yashima Gakutei. It had a warn green patina like copper. It thought it would look great in my place. In the catalog, the estimated price was from 100-300, which normally meant that the opening bid would be 50 bucks. There were hundreds of objects for sale at this auction. A few were battled over fiercerly in escalating bidding wars, but more often than not, the first bidder got in there and no one else bid, so an object with an estimated price of 500-1000 dollars would sell for 250 bucks. I was hoping for the same with the samurai but was quickly disabused of that notion as the opening bid was 100 bucks (becuase of "lots of interest", as Reg said) and it went finally for 475 bucks, way out of my price range, especially when you factor in the 8.25% sales tax and the 17% bidder fee that goes to the auction house. Easy come. Easy go.

I might not rush back to Clars, but I will definitely check out one of the several other auction house around the Bay Area.