Auction

There was an oceanic art auction last night in Sydney. I submitted a form for a telephone bid on several of the lots. I've never been to an art auction before so the idea of placing bids over the phone made the whole experience doubly daunting. The way it works seems straightforward enough. Someone from the auction house rings you up a few lots ahead of the items that you are interested in. The catch is that you have to communicate your bid to the sales rep whilst, at the same time, trying to battle the bad phone reception and the voice of the auctioneer in the background. The pace is also scarily fast...the auctioneer gets through approximately 80-100 lots per hour. The sound made by the fall of the hammer is pretty unequivocal though. So...for my first auction experience, I ended up with this:

...and this...