An Auction Junkie's First Fix 6-22-15

Today being Monday it's cleaning day in the apartment, so Deb sends me on my way.  I've been looking at the Hotel Drouot website for a while now and decided that today was the day to take action.
 Hotel Drouot is the major auctioneer house in France, yes there are Christies, and Sothebys but for things within France Drouot is the place to be.   They sell virtually everything and anything, world class art, jewelry, watches, you name it.  And most are catalogued sales where everything is in a glossy printed book, but they also have basically estate auctions where nothing is catalogued and it's catch as catch can.   In these sales it's a shark tank, with people jostling each other for a chance to look at what is in the next box, rushing up to the front as the auction proceeds to paw at the item, then make a bid if they think it worth bidding on.   And I tell ya, they move things through, if you don't pay attention to the auctioneer you will lose a possible treasure in a heartbeat.  I saw the auctioneer telling a bidder a couple times to pay attention when they would start looking at the item, then it sold. You really have to be on your toes.
Being conducted in French, what's that about?, keeping track of the bids is a bit of an effort but by and large not really difficult.  I watched for a couple hours and got jostled along with everybody else. Many of the bidders are the small brocantes and antiquaires that are seen all over town, and they are ruthless when it comes to keeping their stock levels up.  They are also known to the auctioneers and their associates so get, I suspect, a bit of preference now and again.  But the auctioneers are professional and they want their commissions to remain high so they won't sell an item for next to nothing if they can help it.  And of course the small dealers are competitive with each other as well. A real education for me on my first trip.

I did dip a toe in the water however and bought a little thing again just for the experience.  You don't actually sign up anywhere to bid, you just throw your hand up and be recognized.  If your bid is the winner one of the auction helpers brings you a ticket with the item number and takes your credit card back up to the front desk.  When you're done you go to the front and pay then retrieve your item from another attendant in a holding room.
They have at least 13 auction rooms in the main building most of which are going at the same time, so pandemonium reigns if you're interested in more than one sale on the same day.  And they have sales every day!


After it was over I took the Metro back to the apartment, it was PACKED.  Seriously, when I got on there was precious little room and 8 people barged on after me.  It was so tight that I didn't need to keep a hold on one of the hand holds.  Luckily, my closest companions were young women so it wasn't completely unpleasant.   We did however get stuck between two stations for a number of minutes when the train seemed to make a bit of an emergency stop.  No idea why, but we continued after the above delay and I got back to my stop as the rain let up for a few minutes and I got home just a little damp.