Was watching the car auction, but had to mute it because the auctioneer was so annoying. Maybe the people there could understand what he was singing, but on TV it was just a reverberating babbada baddada babbada etc. Is that chanting really necessary to an auction or is it just tradition?
It’s called auction chant. The idea behind it is to keep the audience’s attention and stir up excitement to get people to keep bidding.
It’s really not hard to understand if you’re paying attention. Here’s an auctioneer selling a quilt at a fair. If you listen, you can understand the “filler words” he’s using in between the bids.
Tradition.
You could conduct an auction with periods of silence, followed by: “I have a bid of $11,000 - would anyone care to bid 12,000?” - but it would sound really strange. The auctioneer believes his “chant” increases interest, excitement and thus the size of the bids.
And it’s never difficult to figure out what’s important: what is the current top bid, and what you need to offer.
The Mennonite (not Amish) auctioneer in the video is very good. Clear and understandable, and an expert at working the crowd. Nice job he did, starting at $500, then dropping to $200 before anyone would bite, and finally selling the quilt for nearly $700. Another “celebrity auctioneer” that’s kind of fun to watch is Dan Dotson on A&E’s Storage Wars.
It had never occurred to me before, but a little google work shows that auction chant is mostly an American tradition that dates to the Civil War era when regimental officers would auction off captured enemy supplies. Hence the common practice, even now of referring to auctioneers as “Colonel”.
While touring an automotive auction, I asked several pointed questions along these same lines. I was told that they have run tests to confirm that the ‘chant’ is actually effective. It is.
I do wonder if it’s because all the people are used to it. An auction without chanting to an audience of people expecting chanting might sounds boring and dreary. The same auction to a bunch of people who don’t expect chanting might seem… normal.
At any rate, at least in this one example, there was some actual science behind it.
By contrast, one of Barrett-Jackson’s competitors, RM Auctions, runs their auction without the chatter and cadence.
Do all of the below in a nice polished slightly British accent.
We’ve a bid of One Hundred and Ten Thousand dollars, can we get One Hundred and Fifteen. wait, wait. *One hundred and ten, holding out for one hundred and fifteen Going once, one hundred and ten. Going twice for one hundred and ten thousand dollars. Going for a third, and final time, at one hundred and ten thousand dollars.*wait wait. GAVEL Sold for One Hundred and Ten Thousand Thousand dollars.
Or hell, just watch a video.
So… I was intrigued to learn that while selling at auction is is practiced nearly everywhere, the distinctive auction chant is strictly an American innovation. A look around YouTube turned up some very different styles of auctioneering:
For comparison purposes, the previously noted Dan Dotson is so into his craft that he sometimes starts talking “auctioneer” in ordinary conversation.
To the British, the American-style chant is probably just another routine affront to the mother tongue… at least there’s no sign of it at this Sotheby’s art auction. I suppose just being in a place where bids are raised in increments of Millions provides sufficient excitement and drama… no need for any more.
The Canadians seem to have embraced and even refined the chant, at least for livestock auctions. This particular sale is actually some kind of auctioneer’s competition.
This Australian auctioneer doesn’t do the chant thing, but he does get a bit of cadence into his spiel.
I was unable to find an example of “the chant” used in Mexico - I thought it would be interesting to hear it done in Spanish - but did locate a bilingual auctioneerin
New Mexico who announces bids in both English & Spanish.
Not entirely relevant to the OP, but kind of interesting.
I grew up going to livestock auctions, so I learned how to read the patter from an early age. My great uncle was a livestock auctioneer. I understand that every auctioneer has a distictive patter, and some are easier to read than others. What you are listening for is where the bid stands now and what’s the next increment higher the auctioneer is asking for. Everything else is filler that you tune out. When my brother and I were getting bored at the cattle auctions we would start making jerky upwards motions with our hands (scratching my nose, adjusting my hat, etc.) to try to get the auctioneer to “bite” on our fake bids. Then my father or grandfather would see what we were doing and smack us up side the head.
I once attended an auction of used musical instruments. I knew the auctioneer fairly well – he had a pronounced stutter – so I was interested to see how he would call the auction. It turned out that his stutter was almost completely lost in the rhythm of the call, and if I hadn’t known he stuttered I would never have guessed it from the auction.
I never understood some auctioneer. They just make noise into the mic and occasionally mentioning the price or a raise. Most of the time the bids came slowly and not as many raises.
As a kid we attended the live stock auctions. Some times to buy some times to sell. My dad stop using the 101 Tuesday auction to sell because the prices were always lower there. Where as the Prunedale auction the sell prices were always higher.
The difference at the 101 auction no one was ever quite sure is he was calling the last raise or calling for a raise. He always had to throw in a bunch of words and slur the words. It was like what is he saying, just how much is he asking for, is he asking for a raise or did he just get a raise?
At the Prunedale auction you could understand every word that was said. You knew if the price was a asking price, asking for a raise, or got the raise. You knew if the price was per pound or per head. Or if there was more than one aminal in the pen was the price per head or for the group. His talk in between was about what he was auctioning of, age of animals, sex, good milk cow, steer or bull. And it was not just one but all of their auctioneers.
If I go to an auction and they have a mush mouth auctioneer I will spend just a few minutes there, to be sure. Then I walk out.
Stutterers/stammerers don’t have issues with singing. I understand it engages a different part of the brain. One common trick is to speak in pace on a beat. Couldn’t be a better fit for the auctioneer business. 