Eastern Shore

Established in 1961 when Norman Dixon bought Hock’s Bazaar and changed the name to reflect his own, the family-run auction draws antiques dealers from up and down the East Coast, locals from the Eastern Shore, and anyone who has an eye for a bargain and an interest in the detritus of human life. (Locals estimate the town population of 454 doubles on auction days.)

Need to buy a new kitchen table or sell an estate? Looking for the next Antiques Roadshow treasure or a Perry Como Christmas LP? To many, this must be the place.

The auction concept is simple and the payoff immediate, explains Vicky Dixon, who, with her husband, Jesse, son, Dylan, and father-in-law, Norman, runs the auction. Consigners sell their wares in one of three locations: inside the warehouse or in one of two fields outside. After a lot is sold, consigners receive cash—usually within 40 minutes of the sale. This, plus low commission rates, makes the auction a draw for antiques dealers from Rhode Island to Florida who do about 90 percent of the buying and selling. What draws others, however, is the sheer spectacle.

“It’s like a circus,” exclaims one shopper, pausing for coffee in the Amish-run diner on the premises.

“Every week it’s something a little different,” says a woman whose red lipstick matches her parka as she wends her way through the long tables strewn with items like a memento-mori tableau. An elephant’s foot stands hollow and empty. Clarinets in tatty velvet cases abut a basket of Battenberg lace tablecloths. Here is a cache of family photos in black and white. There, a child’s toy sink painted cream and red. And although the auction can feel like a final resting place for somebody’s life laid out in pieces on the tables, it is dynamic rather than static, a constant recycling, a new river in which to dip a toe each week.

At 8 a.m., auctioneer Jesse Dixon, perched high on a tractor, presides over the inside auction. A stream of numbers runs from his mouth like a song, punctuated only by the shouts of the groundsman below him. “Victorian clock!” yells the voice from below, hoisting the item into the air. “Iron lamp!”

“Don’t get that one for your wife for Christmas,” jokes Dixon as his tractor rolls slowly down the next row of items.

By 9 a.m., the outside auctions have started. In the field close to the warehouse, items ranging from yellow-painted desks to shoe trees sit in tidy lines on the dusty earth waiting for the opening bid of $5. Buyer prowl through plastic bins of glassware and books, staking out claims near the items they’ll bid on. Others follow mustachioed auctioneer Jimmy Boyles’ yellow golf cart as if he were the Pied Piper.

Whatever doesn’t get sold remains on the lot, and folks scramble to haul away rusty cast-iron skillets, a cigar box filled with spools of black thread, and a 19-cent bag of plastic curtain rings, leaving scattered leaves of sheet music or a single baby sock in their wake.

“Lot 26, stereo speakers,” Boyles cries for the benefit of buyers and the clerk next to him keeping track of sales. Heads bob imperceptibly, a hand waves.