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 Who’ll give me five?
Dave Wedertz encourages the crowd as they bid during an auction
Tuesday. Wedertz has been calling auctions since he was 15 years
old. There’s more to being an auctioneer than
talking fast
By AMY McCARTY
Times correspondent
Times photo/Amy McCarty
David Wedertz went to school to learn to count by half dollars forward and
backward, and to ramble.
Most of us would say that was a waste of money, but not when you are
studying to be an auctioneer.
Wedertz, who has been calling auctions since he was 15 and has been a
licensed auctioneer for the past 24 years, studied the profession in
Northern Iowa right out of high school.
“We had a two-week course with class from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. and then had to
serve a six-month apprenticeship,” he said. “We worked on counting and
filler words, as well as practiced tongue twisters.”
All of this has helped him to make auctioneering his way of life.
After spending a day working with Wedertz and his crew I realized that being
an auctioneer is not as easy as one might think. My family has been telling
me I talk too fast for years, so you would think I’d make a great
auctioneer, but there’s more to the profession than rambling off numbers.
After Wedertz is contacted by a family he has to determine if they have
enough stuff to actually hold an auction. If they do, the manual labor
begins.
“Before the sale we have to make a contract with the owners of the property,
list the auction, type up an auction ad, send out advertising and line up a
food wagon and portable restroom,” he said. “Then we will often carry
everything that is to be sold down to a main level, sort it and set-up for
the auction.”
That was my job on this particular day. Wedertz and his crew, along with the
family who owned the items being sold, were setting up for the auction. So,
in the middle of a hot summer afternoon, we carried boxes, and boxes and
boxes of things outside and displayed them for the auction.
After every box and piece of furniture is set up the items are sorted again.
The idea, according to Wedertz, is to pull items that are more valuable and
set them apart so that they can be auctioned individually.
It’s kind of like having a garage sale, or setting up a display for a store.
The idea is that you want to draw attention to items so that they catch the
eye of the buyer and will bring the most money.
Helping Wedertz on this day was Ed Lambert. Lambert is Wedertz’s go-to guy.
“He helps me with whatever I need done,” Wedertz said.
Come auction time, Wedertz is full of humor as he auctions off items.
Watching him is almost like watching a comedian on television. He kids
around with the crowd, knowing most of them from being in the community so
long, or from them attending auctions.
“I get an idea of the type of items people buy or are looking for, so I know
who might bid on an item and how much they might be bidding,” he said.
As I listened to Wedertz I had to ask myself what he was saying. This being
my first auction, I didn’t have a clue as to what he was rambling. I asked a
member of his work crew
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who told me he was saying, “one dollar here, I got one dollar here.” I’ll
just take her word on it.
Wedertz ramblings are actually called an auction chant.
“Auction chants are very distinctive,” he said. “Everybody has their own
auction chant and no two sound alike.”
At the end of the auction, I asked Wedertz what is the oddest thing he has
ever auctioned off.
“I sold a cruise once,” he said. “It started in Greece and toured the
Mediterranean, and the buyer had the entire boat to themselves. I used to do
a lot of private Catholic School Auctions and the cruise was from one of
them.”
Wedertz has also met some celebrities while calling auctions.
“At one auction I called, Oprah Winfrey was there before she was a
celebrity,” he said.
One of the most expensive items Wedertz has sold through auction, which does
not include real estate, was a combine at a closing bid of $88,000.
Making a living at auctioneering is not easy. Looking beyond the set-up and
calling of the auction one can see the unpredictability of the career
financially.
Wedertz makes his living by making a percentage of the sales from each
auction he calls. That percentage varies by the types of items that are
being auctioned off. He said one day an item may sell well, the next that
same item may go for pennies, you just never know.
It is this hot and cold bidding that makes calling auctions an integral part
of his job. The purpose of the auction chant is not just to sell items, but
to fire up the bidders and get them excited about their purchase so they
will want to keep bidding. This is also where he plugs in humor to encourage
the crowd in their bidding.
“Being an auctioneer is the best,” Wedertz said. “I get to kid around with
people and I get paid for it. It’s actually a fun job.”
With more than 2,000 auctioneers in Ohio and more than a dozen in Hardin
County, Wedertz said he just hopes he’ll be the guy that everyone calls when
they are looking for an auctioneer. On his website, he encourages those
looking for an auctioneer to attend an auction and listen to the auctioneer
before you decide if want to hire their services.
At the end of the evening I had to decide if I could be an auctioneer. I do
tend to ramble, which might help me in the profession, but while getting
paid to talk seems intriguing, I think I’ll pass.
“It’s like being a pro athlete, “Wedertz said. “You can either do it or you
can’t. There are good and bad auctioneers, you either have the ability or
you don’t.”
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