I've been involved in acutions since 1999 as a dealer, bid called and auction owner at Trader J's Auction (general merchandise and estate). I was also a contract auctioneer for Great Gatsby Auction Gallery for several years (estate, art, antique, high-end collectibles). If the work was steady, I would be willing to get my auctioneer license re-instated. I had a job where I travelled a lot and wasn't able to auction, so because of the cost I let my license lapse in 2016.
As an auction owner, I was either clerking, cashiering, working ring or bid calling during live sales. I know several clerking software programs. For estate sales and business liquidations, there is a great deal of lotting and tagging that goes on ahead of time, and I helped with that, including creating and maintaining spreadsheets to provide to the client for what we planned to sell.
At Great Gatsby, there were a number of online platforms used for bids, I've also used some of those, but I was a main auctioneer so I was typically bid calling or reading descriptions there. They would read the description before each lot to allow the people working the platforms to switch between items and get interested bidders online. I also handled phone-in bids there.
My full-time Marketing Director job was recently outsources, so looking to pick up some auction work and get back to something I loved!
Bi-monthly 3 or 4 day sales lasting 5-6 hours a day, requiring an auction rate of 1 item per minute.
As co-owner, I did every job in the auction: lotting and tagging, inventory managment, auction mgt., ring, clerk, cashier, bid calling and load out.