Lyon & Turnbull chief hails move into online auctions

Lyon & Turnbull, the venerable Edinburgh auctioneer, ramped up its operations in the digital realm shortly after the pandemic took hold in March.

And it has proved to be a big success, so much so that the firm has been adding to its team, appointing three new specialists, covering watches, decorative arts and design, and European ceramics and works of art, last month. It now has around 50 staff.

“Business has gone quite crazy,” said Mr Strang, who has been with Scotland’s oldest, and largest, auction house for 18 years. “Long may it continue.”

The transition to online auctioning was done at breakneck speed, with pictures and video footage having to be quickly taken of items that Lyon & Turnbull had prepared to put under the hammer in Edinburgh on April 1. It was crucial that those selling the lots approved of the online move.

“All of them were behind us, which was brilliant,” Mr Strang reflected. “We needed that first, and once they said yes, we went for it.”

While the excitement of a live auction on Lyon & Turnbull’s sales floor is probably impossible to replicate, Mr Strang has been impressed with the buzz online events can generate. And it has necessitated the acquisition of a new skill set for himself.

The first auction took place over a “marathon” 12 hours, with the auctioneer receiving information in his ear from colleagues remotely as the bids came in. Normally there would be 30 to 40 to hand on the premises, but on this occasion he was one of only two people physically in the auction room. “It was incredible, it was a marathon session, but that was partly down to the number of bidders,” he said. “The sale actually performed better than the previous sale in the same category, which we had in October (last year). The selling rate was higher, and the average lot value was higher.”

While Mr Strang is more used to working a floor during a sale, reading body language and making eye contact with likely bidders, auctioneering online is entirely different.

“As an auctioneer, it changes things dramatically,” he said. “Traditionally, an auction is a bit like theatre, you have a room full of people and you are talking to the people in the room.

“I was going to say it was like going from auctioneer to TV star, but actually TV is so old fashioned, as my kids would say. It is more like online streaming. You are a Youtuber, rather than a TV star. It is just playing to the camera.”

He added: “It slows things down a lot. Traditionally an auction might be 80 lots an hour, 100 if you are lucky. But now it is 30 to 50 lots an hour, so it has halved the selling time, because you are building in any delays there might be in people’s internet connections.

“And also, when you have someone in front of you, you can tell whether or not they are likely to be bidding again. Here, you have no idea. You are just speaking to the camera. You implore to the people at home and give them a couple of extra seconds to click the mouse again. A lot of people who have come into online auctions are newbies, so again you have just got to allow them that time to get the hang of it.”

Lyon & Turnbull has achieved some noteworthy sales online. In June, a rare books auction produced a record for an online bid when a first edition of Harry Potter & The Philosopher’s Stone was sold to an international buyer for £125,000. The following month, a seascape by celebrated Victorian painter William McTaggart went under the hammer for £45,000 in a specialist sale of Scottish Painting and Sculptures, which saw 100 out of 103 lots sold.

The auction house, which can trace its roots back to 1826, achieved a “hammer total” of between £11 million and £12m in its most recent financial year, turning over around £4m.

Mr Strang said buyers are spending more on traditional art and antiques than they have for some time, sometimes with cash they would otherwise have spent on holidays had it not been for the pandemic.

“In times of crisis, people tend to be a bit more traditional,” he said. “The other thing is people are at home. They are looking around their homes and thinking… I’d like to redecorate, I’d like to hang a nice picture on the wall, I’d like a nice Georgian bookcase. They are investing in their home environment and we are seeing the benefit of it.”

Mr Strang gained a geography degree at the University of Edinburgh, leaving him with a love for antique maps, and then a Master of Philosophy, Decorative Arts at the University of Glasgow. After an internship at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, he entered the auction world with Christies in Glasgow in 1997. “I loved the cut and thrust of the auction room,” he said. “The hunting of the buried treasure, the glamour of the sales. The speed of the whole process. I loved it.”

Three years before he joined Lyon & Turnbull in 2002, the company had been bought over by the former board of the Phillips auction house in Scotland, backed by Sir Angus Grossart. Sir Angus, a well-known patron of the arts, remains chairman.

“We have seen the big international auction houses consistently pull back, and it [has] created a fantastic opportunity for Lyon & Turnbull, in that mid to top-end market,” Mr Strang said.

“We have kept pushing that, concentrating on things like Scottish art and collection sales, and we are now a top five UK auction house, discounting the international auction houses.”

While the prospect of a vaccine for coronavirus has given hope of a return to normal life by spring, Mr Strang said it will not spell the end for online auctions. “I suspect room bidding will come back to some extent, but things were going more online anyway, because people are time poor,” he said.

“Fewer people want to spend an entire day sitting in a sale room, especially if they are only interested in one or two lots. The technology has now become so good people are doing it from their phones. That is the future.

“One thing that remains important is the ability to view items. If you are making a big purchase, a lot of people do like to come in and see the thing.

“But not everybody. We sold a Harry Potter first edition online for £100,000 at the height of lockdown to somebody on the other side of the world.”