Indiana to Host U.S. Auctioneer Calling Championship
Published May 17th, 2006
The best fast talkers in the world will meet in Auburn, IN on Saturday, Aug. 26 in a competition to win the U.S. Open Auctioneer Bid Calling Championship. The competition, open to all auctioneers, is sponsored by the Indiana Auctioneers Association with a purse of $15,000.
Men and women auctioneers from across the United States and Canada are planning to compete. The contestants will be both general auctioneers and specialists who sell autos, livestock, antiques, fine art, real estate, commercial & industrial equipment and tobacco.
The public is encouraged to attend the auction contest as this will be a unique opportunity to hear the exciting selling sounds of the largest variety of auctioneers ever assembled for a public auction. Many interesting items will be up for bids.
Judging will be based on the bid calling technique of the auctioneers. The bid calling, or auction chant, consists of the increasing numbers as the bids come in with each auctioneer’s chant including “filler words” to add rhythm and excitement.
American auctioneers sell seventy five to one hundred items per hour and their bid calling is said to have been clocked at an average speed of 85 miles per hour with occasional gusts up to 130 miles per hour.
Judges for the event will be nationally recognized leaders in various specialty areas of auction marketing.
The site of this inaugural U.S. Open Auctioneer Bid Calling Championship will be the famous World War II Victory Museum at the Kruse International Auction Park just off of I-69 at exit 126, the first exit north of Ft. Wayne. The auction contest begins at 1 PM.
The Indiana Auctioneers Association, with nearly 800 members, is the largest state auctioneers association in America. Jim Littlejohn, 2006 IAA President from Auburn, IN, said, “It is fitting that the leading state auctioneers association would also be a leader in promoting the auction industry.”
Littlejohn tapped past president, and IAA Hall of Fame Member, Dennis Jackson, Anderson, IN, to be chairman of the event. Jackson said, “This is the first event of this magnitude ever staged in the Midwest and could easily draw 300 entries.”
Source: Indiana Auctioneers Association
