Then it’s on to the miscellaneous and the non-drivable equipment, before ending with the “drive-thru”-a showcase of tractors, turn mowers, dump trucks, combines, campers and excavators. They begin in the morning with the firearms auction-shotguns, rifles, handguns, all calibers and gauges. But the motto of Dukes Auction Group is that their auction goes on, rain or shine, every other month, as long as it takes to auction off each piece of equipment. Beanies and hats are pulled low, close to the eyes. The air is cold and misty with coffee-cup steam and cigarette smoke. A fair price, after all, is only what someone is willing to pay for it.Īnd what’s being bought and sold today-in this coordinated call-and-response of gestures and signals-seems to be everything under the sun, even if on this Saturday in February there is no sun. More hyperactive than flea markets and antique malls, equipment auctions like these, which take place in farming communities across South Carolina, seek to establish the fair market value on used goods. When one buyer tips the bill of his cap, the ring man raises up his hand as if tossing an imaginary ball in the air and cries, “Hep!” Then his eyes, full of fierce determination, immediately begin surveying the crowd for another bidder, and his hands never stop beckoning.įinally, one of the bidders closes his eyes and makes a throat-slitting gesture as if to say, “I’m done,” and the auctioneer makes the final determination known as the “hammer price.” He points to the winning bidder and cries out in a clear voice, “Sold!” “ T wo pow three, three pow four, foooour dollar pow, threeeee, three dollar, four, four pow, five! Five pow, five pow dollar, four, four pow dollar, forty-five hundred, now five, fifty-five, puh pow, puh pow, fifty pow, buhbow, fifty-five, buh bow, five dollar pow, fifty-five hundred …” The other ring man beckons, with a come-hither motion of his hand, for the folks huddled around him to nod or wink or reach their hands from their jacket pockets and make a bid.Īll the while, bursting from the PA system and reverberating throughout the 15-plus acres of barbed-wired enclosed grounds, the voice of the auctioneer fires off numbers in a rapid, hypnotic, bid-inducing cadence.Īt certain intervals along the rambling, nonsensical “filler” of the call, the escalating price emerges if you know what to listen for. One of the ring men holds up a cardboard box holding a fuel pump. It’s auction day and from atop a wobbly and rusty flatbed trailer at Dukes Auction Group in North, two “ring men” are working the crowd, trying to entice a buying frenzy for a grab bag of miscellaneous items-everything from oil pumps to organs, chainsaws to Blues Brothers statues.
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