Money jobs: Inside the auction house
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 16 December 2022
⏱️ 19 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It’s the last episode in our five-part Business Daily series all about high-value, high-transaction jobs you might read about, see on the TV or glamorised in films. In episode five, Leanna Byrne interviews some of the oldest and most well-known auction houses in the world.
Bruno Vinciguerra, chief executive of Bonhams, tells us how auctioneers determine what’s worth auctioning off and what’s not.
Jenny Lok, head of business development and operations at Poly Auction Hong Kong, tells us what the day in the life of an auctioneer is really like.
And Kelly Crow, staff reporter for The Wall Street Journal, gives an insight into who’s buying all of this really expensive stuff.
Presenter/producer: Leanna Byrne
Image: Jenny Lok; Credit: Poly Auction Hong Kong
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | World Football in Qatar is the podcast taking you behind the scenes with all 32 teams at the World Cup. |
| 0:07.4 | We're hearing from the players, the fans and people in Qatar, telling the truly global story of the competition. |
| 0:15.2 | That's World Football in Qatar from the BBC World Service. |
| 0:19.4 | Find it wherever you get your BBC podcasts. |
| 0:28.9 | Have you ever been to an auction? |
| 0:31.1 | Well, I haven't. |
| 0:32.6 | But they do intrigue me. |
| 0:34.4 | I imagine it would be fun to hold up a paddle |
| 0:36.5 | down the back of a crowded room and |
| 0:38.2 | dramatically outbid somebody with a flick of a wrist. One of my favorite auction scenes is in the |
| 0:44.9 | 1996 film First Wives Club. Sarah Jessica Parker plays a husband stealer and social climber. I'm saying |
| 0:53.0 | that with air quotes, by the way, who tries to |
| 0:56.2 | buy her way into the New York High Society at a Christie's auction. Bet Midler and Gouldy Hans' characters |
| 1:02.1 | play fake bidders that drive up the auction sale price to ensure Parker's character pays way more |
| 1:09.2 | than she should. If you haven't seen it, it's a pretty good movie. |
| 1:13.3 | But as tense as it gets for the bidders, what's it like for the auctioneers with the gavel? |
| 1:18.9 | Do they even use a gavel in real life? |
| 1:21.7 | And who's buying all these expensive art collections anyway? |
| 1:25.6 | Going once. |
| 1:26.9 | Going twice. |
| 1:28.2 | Actually, don't go anywhere. |
| 1:30.2 | Because we're going to go behind the scenes |
... |
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