By Adeleke Hassan
Auctioneering as one of the oldest professions in the world has a body of knowledge and skills it can call its own. Not every salesman has the skills of an auctioneer. Auctioneers’ skills require having adequate training and licensing. Some forms of apprenticeship are often required before licensing.
The Greek historian Herodotus first documented the auction about 500B.C He wrote of his visit to the city of Babylon, where he witnessed this method of selling, though he gave it no particular name. The auction Herodotus described was the annual wedding auction, where women of physical maturity were sold for marriage. Herodotus’ description indicated that the auction procedure was the opposite of what is commonly used today.
Instead of using the ascending bid, the offers for brides started high and went down, using the descending method, until a bidder accepted the maiden. Bidding rivals made successive reductions in bids until they reached the minimum amount, they would be willing to accept in return for the less beautiful maidens.
Imperial Rome
The next historical record in the history of auctions deals with the sale of desirable property in imperial Rome. There the magister auctionarium, who was required to have a licence, drove a spear (hasta publica) into soil to signal the start of an auction. Auctions and auctioneering had by this time evolved into codified system of selling, thus indicating old and repeated practices in the past.
Auctions were employed by the Romans as a system of commercial trade. They were held in an atrium auctionarium, where samples of various types of merchandise were displayed prior to the sale. Details of Roman auctions are also somewhat vague. Questions remains on whether bidding was accomplished in ascending or descending pattern, or perhaps in still another manner. It is most likely, however, that the bids increased in amounts, for the word auction is derived from the Latin root auctus “to increase.”
The most popular Auction of Roman Empire
The sale of the entire Roman Empire is regarded as, perhaps, the most preposterous auction of all time. It placed on the auction block a huge empire that then sprawled all the way from Syria on the east to the Danube on the north and to the Britain on the west. Due to political upheavals, the praetorians issued a proclamation that at an appointed time and place the entire Roman Empire would be offered for sale under the auction banner to the highest bidder. And so, the auction began. Didius Julianus, a wealthy senator, outbid everyone for the price of 6,250 drachmas per Guard-an act that led to brief civil war. Didius was beheaded 66 days late when Severus conquered Rome . This division of Roman property began the downfall of the Roman Empire.
European auction activity
In the13th Century, Henry VII of the England promulgated a law to the effect that no person could conduct a public sale of goods or property without first obtaining a license from the proper authorities. All unlicensed persons were strictly prohibited from selling goods or merchandise by “public outcry” without a severe penalty. The word auction appears in Edward Philips’s new world in words in 1658. A sale of 1680 was described as a public auction. The word does not seem to have been in common use until late in the 1680s. Although , auctioning of chattels seems to have preceded auctioning of land . Both types of property were offered in advertisements in the London evening post on March 8-10, 1739. Some of the listed merchandise included threads, socks, gold, silver, lace and two houses belonging to the bankrupt’s estate. The first announcement of a sale devoted only to land appeared in the same newspaper in the 1740s.
There were experiments in systems of bidding. For example, one seventeenth-century catalog mentioned “mineing,” which was a method of sale not recorded in England at that time, but was a system imported from Holland. In this type of auction, the auctioneer put up each lot at a high price and kept reducing the price until someone called out “mine”. Another bidder could advance on the bid, however, so that a blending of the Dutch (descending) system with the English (ascending) system would have resulted. Nevertheless, the common system was and still is the ascending bid system.
History of auction in America
Soon after the colonisation of America, the accepted manner of selling furs and clapboard as well as other necessities was at auction. History of early colonial period in New England make little mention of the auctioneer until the move began in the west. The settlers were selling their land, furniture, personal property and any effects they could not carried cross-country. People were on the move, and the new immigrants were purchasing land and furniture under the auctioneer hammer
The New England rush gave the auctioneers opportunity to demonstrate their worth in the New World. Their method of selling was extremely successful and firmly established auctions as an indispensable way of life .
Hassan is the Registrar / Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Certified Institute of Auctioneers, Nigeria.
