One of the better things about reaching your 40s is that you're not afraid to give yourself credit for your own unique talents. I have exactly three, as follows: I have an uncanny memory for the names of celebrity offspring, I can recite every word of the lyrics of Les Miserables, and I boast a keen eye for a bargain.
I realised early on that I was unlikely to ever make money from the first two. The third, though, had possibilities.
People don't come here to look at lovely displays of nice things. They come here to rummage through piles of shit
In the 1990s, I tried to capitalise on this gift for spending money on what some might call “useless tat” with a career as a stall holder at Mother Redcap’s market in the Liberties in Dublin. The venture was funded by a modest inheritance from my granny, thanks to whose own bargain-hunting prowess, no one in our family will need to buy sandpaper or men’s pyjamas in size XXXL for many generations to come.
Uncluttered
The stock was sourced from charity shops and salvage yards, cleaned, polished and arranged in uncluttered fashion across white painted shelves. The problem with this business model was pointed out on day one by Joan in the next stall. “People don’t come here to look at lovely displays of nice things. They come here to rummage through piles of shit,” she declared, waving at her own collection of vintage homewares, which looked like they had been heaped there by a rogue bin lorry in the midst of a hurricane.
“My crowd think I’m mad,” Joan would say, every single week, as we stood shivering in the market, which, it was clear, had entered the twilight of its existence.
I made a total of £37.18 that summer. It turns out I am much better at buying stuff than at selling it. Regardless, I was hooked. More than once since I have gone out to buy, say, a lightbulb, and come back with a marble top French dresser or yet another mid-century tea set.
Recently I had to swear off auctions on account of a) there being no more room, and b) the threat of divorce. Then, last week, I happened to be walking by Rody Keighery's City Auction Rooms in Waterford at the precise moment an auction was kicking off. (I know. What a coincidence!)
The thing about your first successful bid at an auction is that it is like an alcoholic's first sip of booze. You either walk away then, or you'll be staggering home hours later
The joy of an auction isn't actually about the stuff you might buy. The joy of an auction is about watching other people battle it out over the stuff you'd never dream of buying. It's the drama of two punters going at it over a set of natty Guinness coasters. It's about the Waterford Crystal chandeliers that swagger off into the sunset with price tags of thousands, and the sad dignity of the once-beloved sideboards that fail to raise so much as a nod.
It's the men in suits who go after a box of vintage dinkies as though they were shares in Stripe. It's the elderly woman who trounces the anonymous bidder on the internet in the race to own a Wedgwood dinner set. It's about the glimpses into the mindset of a society that has no use for a mahogany writing table like Hemingway might have used, but will go to war over a secondhand Ikea one.
Fabergé egg
It's the thrill of the chase; the certainty that you will be the one to find the Fabergé egg buried in that box of paste jewellery. I swear, the first reality TV show wasn't Big Brother; it was Antiques Roadshow back in 1979.
I sat on my hands for the first hour or two. I really did. I stayed sitting on my hands even when Rody’s gavel went down on a large brass bugle for €15. I didn’t blink when a mahogany chest listed at €250-€450 sold for €50. Finally, I could take it no more, and grabbed a pen and ink drawing of Trinity College for €5.
The thing about your first successful bid at an auction is that it is like an alcoholic’s first sip of booze. You either walk away then, or you’ll be staggering home hours later, armed with a pair of Victorian button-back chairs, a set of pewter tankards and a sewing table.
Naturally, I did not walk away then.
Many hours passed before I emerged into the evening light, the proud owner of a set of fire irons, a Waterford Crystal rose bowl, a salad bowl, some vintage glass paperweights, two working Game Boys and an ugly west German bowl that I'm going to make a fortune selling on eBay. (I come from excellent lineage in this regard – my mother once found an original Marc Chagall in a junk shop.)
My husband eyed my haul, noted that it fitted into a single box, and look momentarily relieved. “There’s a few more things to come,” I said. “You’d better get the other car. And put the back seat down.”
I don’t understand why more people don’t go to auctions: it is among the very best forms of free entertainment there is.
The fact that it’s rarely free for me is, of course, entirely beside the point.