Local Auctioneer Wins Annual
Bid Calling Competition
Bid Calling Competition
Coeur d’Alene, Idaho - Counting fast is just the beginning.
To lead an auction, to scour a sea of eyeballs and will them into throwing out a bid, takes poetry, wit and lightening speed. It’s one part orchestra conductor with a dash of rodeo announcer and rock star, wielding the charm of a talk show host over a precise, metered chant that the pros never falter for a nanosecond.
To Rose Backs, it’s like second nature.
The Coeur d’ Alene area auctioneer carried away the 2009 Idaho State Champion Auctioneer title in competition held during the Idaho Association of Professional Auctioneers annual convention. The panel of judges consisting of three past champions, Monte Lowderman, BOD from the National Auctioneers Association representing NAA and Kootenai County Commissioneer Todd Tondee.
The trophy is just the latest in the 29 - year old’s string of victories, including twice making the finals in the International Auctioneers Championship in 2004 and 2006, and landing in the finals in the Northwest Auctioneer Competition in 2005.
"It’s pretty incredible and very humbling to be in a crowd of your peers during these competitions, but very rewarding," Rose said.
But trophies are just garnishment for the mantle - making it in the industry is really marked by profit and popularity, and she is leading in both categories.
Besides working with Randy and Annette Wells at Realty Auction Services in Post Falls, Rose and husband Matt, a seasoned auctioneer of 17 years, also contract out to auctioneer across the U.S.
It’s actually very exciting, one day we might find ourselves with one of us in North Carolina and the other in California," Rose sid. ’It gives us opportunities to meet people and do things we otherwise would not do."
The success is a surprise, as calling out bids had never been on her list of life goals, she said.
When she and Matt married a decade ago, she ran the auction behind the scenes at MR Auction and Realty Auction Services, where she tallied entries, arranged venues and assigned values while her husband took the stage and chanted up a storm.
But demand continued to swell, to the point that the small company was forced to turn down auctions.
"Honestly the reason I wnt to auction school was to fill in when it was necssary to pick up a weekend when Matt and Randy was too busy," Rose said. "I never had any real intention of making this a profession."
In 2004 she signed up, along with johnna Wells, Randy and Annette’s daughter for a two week course at the Reppert School of Auctioneering in Auburn, Indiana, where she crammed on statistics and tounge twisters that she now spews out with the easy rhythm of a chugging locomotive.
"Public speaking was definately the hardest thing for me," she admitted. "I would come off stage and I’d be a wreck, my heart would be beating a mile a minute".
After a few years of practice, though, it’s all just another part of the job, and her jokes and chummy stage presence make her a fquality choice at local and national fundraising auctions, which she dubs as her speciality.
She and Matt divide their time between Realty Auction Services and contract jobs that whisk them out of state two or three times a week.
"The nature of what we do is almost like a gig in a rock band - they call you and say, "hey can you come and prefrom at an event?" Whether in New York, Seattle, Anchorage, or locally,".
It’s a coveted level to reach in the business, and obtained more by word of mouth than advertising.
Rose and Matt both run about five auctions per week, he said, and usually get to do three together, trading off between who calls the bids and who surfs the audience spotting bidders.
When you’re preforming, when you’re selling something, it’s just like being in a sporting event - and you are percieved that way to. People kind of look up to you, after all, it’s a lot more than just counting.
Congratulations Rose!!!!!!
from Matt, Randy, Annette, Sue, John, Linda, Johnna and Joshua. Job well done.
