Auctioneers battle downturn
DELAND -- Thirty-one years ago, Fred Whipple had to relearn how to count.
He was attending a three-week auction school in Indiana, where he learned the trade's cadence -- that famous, rapid auctioneer speech. Memorizing numbers was another part of the coursework. Counting numbers at auction school is different from regular school. Auctioneers don't ask for bids in dollar increments.
"As a kid you learn 1, 2, 3, not 80, 90, 100," said Whipple, of DeLand.
Learning to talk differently came easily for Whipple, 70, from day one at the school. After being self-employed in the construction business prior to his career change, he wanted to entertain people, which an auctioneer does while hawking products for hours at a time.
"In our business, we're one-liner comedians," he said.
He loves the job and plans to do it until he dies, but auctions, like many industries, are going through a sea of change caused by technology and a poor economy.
"We just work harder and do more volume," said Ronnie Berner, whose father F.W. opened up an auction house in Daytona Beach in 1950 after moving to the area from Ohio. That auction house, Berner's Auction, now in DeLand, still conducts auctions every Wednesday night that attract about 300 people. But the auction house used to do them three times a week.
The Internet both has helped and hurt the industry, whose auctioneers are graying. Today, there are 1,936 licensed, active auctioneers in the state, down from 2,545 last year, a 24 percent drop, according to the state Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation.
An auctioneer tends to be the second career for many people, and the average age is about 55, said Melissa Davis, owner of the Reppert Auction School in Indianapolis. Whipple attended the school, which has existed for 90 years.
Stan Crooks, the West Palm Beach-based president of the Florida Auctioneers Association, said that the Internet -- specifically online auction site eBay -- has significantly changed the market.
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