The Missouri Professional Auctioneers Association’s 2014 Winter Convention
Professional Auctioneers | Ringmen
by Rob Weiman
The Missouri Professional Auctioneers Association met this Winter at The Elms in Excelsior Springs, MO. It was a wonderful hotel, with a great history. We had a 2 part real estate class covering selling commercial real estate in Missouri, a class on the art and science of working the ring, and a panel on “Marketing in the 21st Century”.
The ringman class was taught by Sam “The Hit Man” Grasso. For those of you not familiar with the auction world this might require a bit of explanation. Sam works as a professional ringman.
Auctions (not unlike circuses) can have rings. Just like a 3 ring circus, a 3 ring auction would have something going on in 3 different places, these places would each be called a ring. An 3 ring auction might have a jewelry ring, a gun ring and a furniture ring. Auctioneers set up multiple rings in an auction when they have to many things to sell in one ring during the time frame of the auction. The idea is that the bidders who buy guns are not normally the same bidders that buy jewelry or furniture. If they are interested in both rings they can either bring another bidder with them and split up, with each bidder attending a different ring, or they can leave an absentee bid with the auctioneer calling bids in the ring they can’t attend.
Each ring would have it’s own auctioneer and ringmen (sometimes called ring persons) and a clerk to record what sold, who bought it and what did it sell for. Sam is one of these ringmen. He makes his living traveling the USA assisting auctioneers. A ringman is the go-between standing out in the crowd, relaying what the auctioneer is saying to the bidders and relaying information from the bidders back to the auctioneer either with their voice or with hand signals. Sam is at the top of the heap in the world of ringmen, he is in great demand, he makes auctioneers money. When he is not ringing at an auction Sam is teaching others the proper way to be a ringman at State and National Auctioneers Associations conventions.
One of the auctions Sam works is a 5 ring auction that still takes 7 days to sell thousands and thousands of pieces of equipment. Sam told us he was working this auction one time when his ring that day had 789 skid steers (A Bobcat is a type of skid steer). These auctions can have thousands of bidders, it is simply physically impossible for an auctioneer to see all of these bidders let alone see if they are bidding. Sam can get in the crowd get to know the bidders in his area, chat with them see what they are interested in, before the auction starts. He can find out if they want to set up some sort or signal to indicate that they want to bid. These bidders tend to be professional buyers, some of whom attend the auction with over a million dollars, and their own private body guards. The often do not want others to know they are bidding, they might bid by winking at the ringman, crossing their fingers or other small signals. The ringman can see these small signals, keep track of the bidder, the bid amount of the bid and signal the auctioneer that they have a bid and that their bidder is “in” or has the current high bid. If they want to be sure if the auctioneer has their bidder and their bid as the high bid they can use another hand signal to the auctioneer to ask “do you have my bid?” All of this is very seamless, and transparent to the bidders.
The ringman will speed the auction up and will be able to let the bidder know when they are “out” (that is, tell them that they are no longer the high bidder) ask the bidder if they want to bid again (get back in). Depending on the auction and the auctioneer, the ringman might be able to pass a cut bid to the auctioneer. As an example say the auctioneer is selling a large Caterpillar D9 Bulldozer and the current bid is $85,000 and the auctioneer is asking for $90,000, the ringman might have the a bidder who will not bid $90,000 but might bid half of the bid increment (in this case $87,500) or perhaps $86,000. In this case the auctioneer and ringmen would normally have a hand signal to indicate the smaller bid amount. Many times a bidder who will not bid $5,000 in one bid will bid $10,000 more in $1,000 or $2,500 bids. This is were a ringman pays for himself.
Ringmen can be of great value at a large benefit auction. Non-profits who think that their volunteers can match the performance of a professional ringman have never seen Sam or a real professional ringman do their magic. Sam has a very friendly demeanor, he is the type of guy that can know you for 3 seconds and establish a rapport, people what to make him happy. He can get the last dime out of a room. If you ever see a pro like Sam work you will never leave money on the table again by using “free bid spotters”. A bid spotter and a professional ringman are not even remotely close. Sam got his nickname from auctioneers for his ability to get his bidders to “hit it again” (bid one more time).
If you have ever worked with the hit man, or any other great ringman I encourage you to leave a comment about how important they were to the success of your auction below.