Fast-Talking Auctioneers

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hey, this is Jerry McCann from Baltimore. How are you?

Hi, Jerry.

Jerry McCann. Hi, how are you?

Welcome to the program.

I was cruising cable TV one night and flipped past the collector car auction on ESPN.

And suddenly it struck me that I don’t know what in the world that is that auctioneers do.

That manner of speech of what they do to get the bid up.

Now, I really couldn’t understand what the guy was saying,

And it occurred to me any time I’ve heard an auctioneer,

The iconic sort of auctioneer in the tobacco barns,

You know, is sort of the classic image that people have of auctioneers.

I can’t understand what he’s saying.

I don’t know what he’s doing.

If I try to do it, I sound like Elmer Fudd.

You know, it’s like, you know, I just don’t know what it is.

And it occurred to me it’s something to do with the words.

So I thought of you guys, and I just know that you’re going to give me this fabulous explanation of where that comes from and what it is they’re doing.

I used to go to estate sales with my father when I was a boy, and it was always about these fast-talking men in these big hats and big boots.

It seemed like everybody had their foot up on the rear bumper of a pickup truck.

It’s as if they brought the trucks only for that.

And these guys up there selling somebody’s belongings, the family’s long gone,

Or some old folk had passed on or something.

It’s a strange thing, isn’t it?

Yeah.

But, Jerry, you are right.

It is about the numbers.

It’s all about pushing those numbers higher and higher

Because the auctioneer gets a cut of however much money comes in.

And it’s also about the numbers because they, as you probably noticed,

They sell a whole bunch of things.

I mean, you’re trying to sell a whole bunch of stuff in a very short period of time.

And I’ve done a little reading about this.

It’s actually really cool how they come up with these, you know, like musicians.

They come up with these stock riffs and filler phrases, you know,

Like dollar bidden or now or would you give me.

And so, you know, you start to learn those patterns and put them together,

And you get something like one dollar bidden now, two now, two,

Would you give me two, two dollar bid now, three now, three.

Would you give me three, three dollar bid now, four now, four.

Would you give me four, three dollar bid now, four now, four.

Would you give me four, four dollar bid now, five.

Four dollar bid.

I mean, I love this stuff.

And of course, I’m a big enough nerd that I had to try.

That’s awesome.

How long did it take you to rehearse that before?

She’s been practicing her whole life.

The rest of us sing songs in the shower.

This is what she does.

Let me just say, public radio fundraising will never be the same.

Can you imagine?

But, Jerry, since you asked, I will tell you that I worked maybe three hours on that.

That’s awesome.

And you start to learn these little patterns.

And the cool thing is that you can go to YouTube.

We should link to this.

You can go to YouTube, and some auctioneers will share their secrets.

And then you start to break it down, and you realize that they’re emphasizing those numbers,

And they’re always emphasizing the higher number.

So you keep going up and up and up and up.

And once you’re exposed to it, I don’t know how many of these you’ve been to or how many of these shows that you’ve seen.

Once you’re exposed, even as a boy, I began to understand it.

The numbers will leap out at you even if you can’t understand the rest of it.

And I’ve had it described to me as somebody reading a very fast ticker tape.

These old style machines where the stock quotes are coming in and he’s doing a live play-by-play of that.

He’s got to keep your interest, keep you enthusiastic, move the action along.

And he keeps like, he’ll pop up a word every now and again so that your eye is drawn to him, your ear is drawn to him.

You’ve got to turn to him.

He can’t have you stray.

He can’t have you wander over to the hamburger stand.

Right.

You’ve got to keep your eye on him.

Yeah, and it’s kind of hypnotic too, don’t you think, Jerry?

Well, yeah.

I was always, I was wondering at the same time why we’re so fascinated with it.

Is this an American thing?

Is this an English thing?

I mean, I can’t imagine it being done in German.

That’s a good question.

We should try Spanish.

It is an American thing.

I know that for sure.

It seems to have arisen sometime in the Civil War, but nobody’s really sure why it happened.

I think it was just necessity.

See how revved up I am now?

I’m starting to sound like Grant just talking about this stuff.

I’m excited about life.

But they don’t do it like this in Britain.

I mean, if you look at those, you know, Sotheby’s auctions, they’re not quite like that.

Well, but surely they have estate sales.

Maybe they do the same thing.

Maybe they do.

Well, I’m sure we have some listeners who could tell us.

It’s seductive, though.

Oh, it is.

I bet you watched that channel for far longer than you had to, didn’t you?

Well, I think the real thing is that it is maybe not seductive so much as it’s designed to make you not think so clearly about what you might be doing.

I think you’re right.

You get into this sort of alpha wave state, and then you also, at the same time, have this sense of urgency because it’s moving so quickly, and there are people around you doing all these things.

You don’t want to miss out on it.

I love that.

I think it’s kind of a distraction to try to keep you from thinking about not going higher.

Yeah, about your wallet.

Yeah.

Right.

That’s interesting.

Jerry, what a great topic.

We could go on all day.

We’d have to do it really fast, though.

Thanks for calling, Jerry.

I can’t do it, Martha.

Auctioneer us out, Martha.

Oh, that’s all I know.

I gave you my best.

Thanks for calling, but the short version is, yes, it’s meant to rile you up and get you to buy and keep you excited.

Okay.

Thank you.

All right.

Take care.

Take care, Jerry.

Bye-bye.

We’ll see you.

Bye.

Give us a call.

Let us know how you do your patter.

What’s your filler?

How do you practice?

How do you warm up your lips?

How do you just make yourself understood and raise those prices?

877-929-9673.

Or tell us the whole sordid story in email to words@waywordradio.org.