FRIDAY at McTear's auction house in Glasgow, and Andy Irvine, a balding man in a blue fleece, has been waiting almost five hours for the sale of lot 498 – a vintage one-arm bandit – but he is determined to have it and, in the end, snaps it up for just £28.
It's a curious and evocative silvery item, which accepts only sixpences, and I can't help but wonder how many sweaty palms, over the years, have yanked its Bakelite handle (now missing) in the feverish hope of lining up three plums and winning the f
ive shilling jackpot. Not that Andy Irvine cares about provenance and romance.
"I first bought it for £18 on Monday at Hamilton auction and then sold it on Wednesday for £50 at my stall in Polmadie market," he explains. "And I've bought it again because two minutes after I sold it, there was a guy offering me £150. So I'll sell it to him on Saturday. I've got a bag of tanners to put in it as well."
Irvine, 52, was once an HGV driver but had two heart attacks and a stroke and lost his licence. He sat at home for 15 months feeling sorry for himself before deciding on a new career as a trader – if he couldn't have wheels, he could at least wheel and deal. Everyone, though, has their own reasons for coming to McTear's.
It's quite a sophisticated place. They sell expensive art including, currently, Peter Howson's painting of Madonna and Guy Ritchie, which looks like Shrek ravaging Rick Wakeman – and rare whisky worth thousands of pounds.
Despite the recession, rich people are buying art and booze and squirrelling them away as investments.
Every Friday, however, McTear's has a general sale called "Vintage and Modern", which is much lower-rent and a lot of fun. The pleasure is in the randomness of the goods on offer. Although there are quality pieces of jewellery to be had, for me the real gold does not glister. There's an old wooden radio with marked stations including Vatican City, Honolulu, Moscow and BBC Light. There's a child's sewing machine from the 1950s ("She sews as she grows," runs the amusingly sexist slogan). There are metronomes, garden gnomes and 70s telephones. A football annual from the early 80s has a mulleted Gordon Strachan on the cover; the stuffed exotic birds in an Edwardian display cabinet have only slightly less ridiculous plumage.
The sale begins at 10.30am with John Hayes, the auctioneer, only slightly hungover after yesterday's trip to Islay to auction a single bottle of whisky for £5,400. He opens on an intriguing note – "Good morning everyone, and welcome. For anyone who's interested, those teeth were claimed" – then gets down to business.
The first lot, a box of lamps, sells quickly for £5. It's clear that this is going to be nothing like the auctions in films. Yes, people are taking phone bids, but this is a much less tense and formal. Around 40 punters – a mix of dealers, collectors and people selling their own belongings – sit around on whatever chairs are up for sale and bid on almost 500 items.
Nothing is very expensive. The top price is £330 for a Victorian chest of drawers but no other item comes close. The average price is about £20, and the bidding rises in increments of three, five, ten pounds. It feels old fashioned in a good way. This is how things were done before online auctions took off. You might call it preBay.
The two auctioneers split the sale into hour-long shifts and are visibly amused on occasion by some of the things they are expected to shift.
"Victorian mahogany bidet stand," says John White, a titter in his voice. "Interesting little item this. Can I see £40?" He can't. It doesn't sell. But remarkably, he has more luck with a huge broken bench from a puffer ship, which he flogs for a fiver to an old lady in a tangerine blouse who buys it on impulse for her son and then worries about how to get it home.
I catch up with John Hayes as he wets his whistle with a coffee between shifts. He's a droll 61-year-old from the Wirral. How long has he been an auctioneer? "Oh, since the Old Queen died. Freddie Mercury, I mean."
In truth, Hayes has been wielding the gavel for 25 years but still finds the work stimulating. "You have to keep your wits about you all the time. You've got the telephone bids going, people just winking at you, people hiding behind pieces of furniture and popping their head out to bid. You get situations where one bidder doesn't like the other and is determined not to let that person buy the lot. When I'm up there, it's like being on stage. You've got to make sure that people enjoy themselves."
Auction houses can be poignant places. When I was browsing before the sale began, I got talking to Lyn Munro from Glasgow who was selling a fantastic Babycham ashtray, one of a number of items that had belonged to her late mother. She died a couple of years ago but Munro, 60, subsequently downsized and was facing up to getting rid of the things she'd inherited. She was sad to be doing so, but said she felt you have to let things go.
"Even up on the rostrum I can get quite emotional about the history behind items," Hayes says. "I once went to see an old gentleman who was going into care. He had been living in poverty for many years, but his house was an Aladdin's Cave. If he had only realised, his latter years would have been much more comfortable than they had been. One particular item, a Georgian chest-on-chest, sold for about £25,000."
First thing in the morning, McTear's auction room was packed with items, but as the day wears on and lots are sold, the young porters in white shirts and green aprons start packing them into boxes. Is there any more pathetic sight than a Hummel figurine of a young boy in lederhosen sitting alone and unloved in a display cabinet? He's a wallflower at the dance.When the sale ends I almost wish I'd bought him.
The full article contains 1067 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
