Auction Figures -- At Bushell's In Belltown, The Buy-Sell Routine Has Remained A Family Affair For Generations

Tuesday at Bushell's Auction House on Second Avenue in Belltown. Auction day.

Buyers finger the engraved door handle and step onto a floor that could support an aerobic exercise class for elephants. They know exactly what they will find.

Oh, the particular treasures will be different. Boxes full of spurs, Colt .45s. A bed in the shape of a boat. A Tappan microwave oven that might go for $20. Christmas collectibles that will unexpectedly rush up to $920.

But the routine will be identical to last week's. Last year's. Almost last century's.

The auctioneer, whose gaunt good looks and bushy mustache bring to mind a blue-coated cavalry officer, is a direct descendant of the founder. John Hardman is the great-great-grandson of John Bushell, who arrived in Seattle in 1889 and held his first auction in 1906.

Hardman doesn't whip customers into a buying frenzy at the weekly auction. His understated delivery matches Bushell's Auction House tone. Not aloof, not desperate; simply there to do a service. "Twenty is bid. Do I hear $25? Thirty in the back. Do I hear the $35? $35. Bid is closed at $35."

That tone may seep up from old-fashioned spirits in the treasure-filled basement, through the floorboards laid on edge in 1916 to hold the weight of furniture.

John Bushell, a prohibitionist who was deemed too principled to succeed with auctions, erected a home for his business that endured as neighboring Belltown hotels went from respectable to flophouses to glossy gentrification.

Or the restrained tone might come from something equally venerable: the raised eyebrow of Bushell's white-haired great-granddaughter, Mary Bushell.

Modernization? Hardly

Like their building, the Bushells are built to last. Each generation works so long and hard they shape the next generation well into middle age. Bushell's Auction House operates by certain standards. Modernization isn't one of them.

Computers instead of handwritten bills? More generous estimates to lure in quality estates? A cashier's booth that would accept credit?

Mary Bushell's answer: "As long as I'm around, I don't go for it."

Up goes the eyebrow. Down goes the newfangled notion. And back come the customers, week after week after week.

"It's a comfort zone," said Bette Loomis, who has been a regular visitor to 2006 Second Ave. since she began furnishing her first house in the mid-1950s.

"You go in the door and it looks the same and you see the same faces and they're aging with you. The same family has owned it for generations, and that's almost nonexistent in Seattle."

Among the customers are those who come with the help of canes and those who clunk around in trendy Doc Martens. They wear wool coats, English tweeds, windbreakers that announce the names of taverns.

They may own antique stores, secondhand stores, booths at the Pike Place Market or swap meets. They might be collectors hoping for specific items. Or they're retirees, there to visit as much as buy.

The only changes, said a patron who first came in 1940 with his father, is that furniture that was modern is now considered antique.

The regulars know who is after what. A local developer's aged father used to keep a warehouse full of his purchases, and when he started to bid, for whatever caught his fancy, the regulars knew enough to drop out.

Sometimes grandchildren left out of the will come to buy estate items that meant something to them. The sentimental value will run up the price.

If two people get into a bidding war, it's polite to stay out until they're done, said Joy Peterson of Everett, who has the same fun-spoiling limitation as many of the other regulars: no room in her house.

Her eyes this day are drawn by wrought-iron patio furniture. What would her husband say, she wonders.

"I bought some wall shelves one time," Peterson said. "I've had them 15 years and I still can't find a place to put them up."

Buyers preview on Friday afternoons and all day Monday. Bushell's expects the buyer to do research and make a judgment. If the TV works on the floor but doesn't work a week later, consider it $50 poorly spent.

An auction, not a store

Some customers dare to make suggestions. Sellers would feel more comfortable, they say, if Bushell's would allow a minimum bid. It's too much of a gamble to put up a cherished painting that could go for $5 or $5,000.

Mary Bushell's response: "Start your own auction house."

How could she say otherwise? It was her great-grandfather, after all, who said, "If you want to have an auction, you auction. If you want to put a price on things, you have a retail store."

Her penchant for terse, traditional statements goes along with her no-nonsense appearance: running shoes, jeans, sweatshirt and blunt-cut white hair.

But as Mary Bushell passes through the crowd, she lightly touches an elbow or the small of a back. "Larry," she nods to a dealer, patting his shoulder. People feel so at home they sit on the glass cases, in antique chairs and even cross-legged on a chopping block about to be auctioned.

And downstairs, in the high-stacked basement that would be to treasure lovers what gold was to Midas, Mary Bushell has a little secret. One whole corner is filled with stuff she couldn't resist, including hats and masks she wears to social events.

"I need a tandem bike, don't you think?" she said, teasing one day recently as she passed by goodies waiting for the next week's auction.

Hardly a week goes by that someone doesn't tell Mary Bushell how he or she envies the seven-person Bushell's crew. Up goes the eyebrow. They have no idea of the work, she says.

The Bushells move every day. Housefuls of furniture go from trucks down to the basement, then up to the show floor, then to the back room or back down to the basement as it awaits the trip home.

There might be 40 different sellers at a single auction, many more times that many buyers. The family has to keep track of who sold what and who bought what, in the meantime "guarding against people setting their coffee cups on it."

The week has a routine:

-- Mondays and Fridays, previews; Tuesdays, auctions from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., with a nighttime auction for finer pieces held roughly every six weeks. The Tuesday night auctions have brought in $20,000 and more for single paintings.

-- Wednesdays and Thursdays, people pick up what they bought or bring in what they want to sell. Bushell's will go out on those days to visit homes or dying businesses to give their best guess of what something might bring at auction.

And that's another of Mary Bushell's influences. It is better to give an estimate of $1,000 and hope it brings in $3,500 than to say $3,500 and have it bring in $1,000.

"If people are disappointed, they're not going to tell their friends about us," she said.

It behooves the company to let the junk pass by and sell only finer items, but they often get it all with liquidations.

Bushell's charges a 40 percent commission on anything under $100 and 20 percent on anything that sells above $100. To move a $100 chest of drawers through all the motions is more work than the $20 commission is worth, Mary Bushell said.

A customer who asked to be nameless because she'd just bought turn-of-the-century Christmas ornaments as a gift for her daughter, a collector, said about Bushell's: "It's not necessarily the cheapest, but it's the best."

No ringers in the crowd

Auctions have been known to put ringers in the audience to drive up the bid. Not Bushell's, this woman said. And if you buy a box of something, the odds are very good it will all be there when you go to pick it up.

"It's a wonderful family," said Joy Peterson of Everett. "Very honest. You don't have to worry."

Mary Bushell speaks plainly to that issue. It's easier that way, she said.

"You don't have to remember what you told someone else."

People told the original Bushell that he was "too single-minded, too principled" to succeed as an auctioneer, according to a newspaper article written in 1940, shortly before John Bushell died at 92.

But Bushell, who arrived in Seattle with 35 cents in his pocket, countered that he would survive by not selling defective goods. "I would be fair," he said.

It worked from 1906 through the 1920s, but the company, by then managed by Bushell's sons, survived the Great Depression only because one, Richard Bushell, had the foresight to put money away during the good years.

Bushell's still operates by that financial lesson. Mary Bushell and her two surviving sisters, Margaret Boyle and Salle Hardman, have never borrowed money, even last year when the building required a new roof.

"For the most part, our customers are of the same ilk," said Mary Bushell. "They don't buy something they can't afford because we don't take charge cards. Frankly, I think we'd all be better off if we were that way."

The workers are all family, or nearly so. Bill Boyle, the older auctioneer, is married to Margaret. Salle Hardman came back to work in the office after her children were grown. Her three sons, John, Jeff and Greg, all work at Bushell's.

The only outsiders, Gary Anderson and Gary Versteege, have worked at Bushell's since they went to school with John Hardman at Washington State University.

Ficus? No, a `fakeus'

They've been around so long they dare to entertain themselves as they hold up items for auction - Anderson calling an artificial ficus plant a "fakeus," Versteege playing the castanets with fine china - despite Mary Bushell's disapproving looks.

When the Bushell sisters are gone, it's likely that business receipts will no longer be kept in alphabetized shoe boxes in the basement. The "boys" would like to computerize, maybe even advertise beyond a whisper in the Sunday classifieds.

But such dramatic changes may not be a worry any time soon.

The Bushell sisters' father, Andrew, worked until he was 87, still following the principal of his father, Richard.

Once when a customer promptly returned what he had been overpaid in change, the next person in line said to Richard Bushell, "`Doesn't it surprise you when people are so honest?"

"It surprises me when they're not," he said.

Mary Bushell says nothing has changed. Once in a while somebody is not quite what she would hope, but most who trade at Bushell's are "very wonderful people."

"I choose to do business by treating people decently, and hopefully they'll treat me decently back." ----------------------------------------------------------------- Bidding good buys: tips to remember

There are a half dozen auctions listed every Sunday under "Auctions" in the classified section of the newspaper. If you go to an auction, remember these tips:

-- If you know what you want, research in advance. What's a good price? What would a collector pay? -- Inspect items carefully at the preview. Sit in the chair. Look for bad repair, weak wood, etc. -- If you want to attend only that part of the auction that includes the item you want, consider that most auction houses go through about 100 items an hour. -- Ask for a written guarantee of authenticity if a piece is represented as a certain age, maker, material, etc. -- Your first time at an auction, refrain from bidding. Get an idea of what pieces will bring. -- Know your limit in advance. Stick to it. -- Attract the auctioneer's attention initially, then use subtle signs to increase the bid. They will be watching for you once you're "in." Act authoritative, not desperate or in a hurry. -- If you're selling goods and you don't know what something is worth, you'll have to rely on someone else's opinion. Get more than one opinion. Educate yourself as much as possible. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Bushell's Auction House, 2006 Second Ave., 448-5833. Auctions 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. almost every Tuesday, lunch break after the first 350 items. previews Fridays from noon to 7 p.m., and Mondays from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m.