Auction Advice: Why not become an auctioneer? It’s a great career – I should know

Students have headed back to college, pupils to schools, but there are also a lot of new graduates and school leavers looking to their careers now. Should they consider becoming auctioneers?

Having started at the bottom and worked my way up, I have no regrets. I still think the best way in is the traditional one: starting as a porter at one of the larger auction houses, graduating to cataloguing and developing specialist knowledge in your chosen field while studying for a fine arts valuation qualification. There aren’t many courses left around the country, but they are worth doing if this game is for you.

A lot of the auction business has already gone online, and I have no doubt that more will in future. However, I also believe that there will always be brick-and-mortar salerooms for people to visit, view and handle the goods first, particularly at the top end of the market where prices run into the millions. We sell via both channels.

Auctioneering as a career still holds a lot of promise and the chances of setting up your own business and working for yourself in the long term are greater than in most other industries. It’s something you might want to have a think about.

Another thing to understand is that despite often selling ‘old stuff’, the world of art, antiques and auctions is actually pretty cutting edge as a place to do business.

Having a chat with an industry colleague the other day, we both reflected on how much auctions have changed over the past 40 to 50 years.

The most obvious change since the millennium has been the influence of the internet, first with websites that allowed people to view auction lots prior to sale and gave even quite parochial auctioneers a global audience; then live online bidding, which has been the biggest game changer of all, along with the promotion of sales via social media, especially Instagram. But go back even earlier and you will find other significant developments.

If you attended an auction in the 1960s, you would rarely have found a detailed catalogue outside the London rooms. Where catalogues were available, estimates were not. The consequence of all this was that bidders, who were almost always in the room itself in those days, would have been all but exclusively trade. Auctions wholesale, trade retail, as the saying went.

Dealers, I’m sure, would love it if that were still the case, but times have moved on, auction houses have learnt the value of the private buyer, there are more niche specialists than generalists, and quality of service for the private punter has become the watchword. Such changes bring their own challenges, but what struck my friend and me was just how versatile and adaptable auctions have been over the years, and how they embraced technology as a means to market much earlier than other means of commerce.

That’s why I think they’re here to stay.