Publicity kicked off last month for the auction of Freddie Mercury’s possessions: furniture, art and trinkets go under the hammer in September, plus handwritten lyrics, stage props and a waistcoat decorated with portraits of his cats. It might even top last year’s Joan Didion auction, at which literary groupies outbid each other for the cult writer’s stained napkins and novelty aprons: people paid $11,000 a piece for unused blank notebooks.
If your curiosity is piqued, but you don’t have Tiffany moustache comb money (another Mercury lot), can I recommend seeking out a civilian version? I’m an auction addict. It’s my husband’s fault: he discovered our local auction house – a paradise of outdated agricultural machinery, brown furniture and bargain white goods (he equipped our kitchen for next to nothing) – and has infected me. Only yesterday, I spent 40 blissful minutes scrolling through toby jugs, horse brasses, lawnmowers and a puzzling number of signed photos of Rex Harrison.
Auctions have all the ethical advantages of vintage – the acceptable face of shopping – plus bonus elements. Like in any charity shop, I don’t want 98% of the stuff, but browsing scratches my consumerist itch. Then, for the odd things I do covet, bidding is such a rush: sweaty fingers clawed around my mouse, I watch the thumbnail video of the bored auctioneer and calculate whether a puffin-themed plate is worth another fiver, while speculating furiously about my rival bidder until the hammer falls. The endorphins, the drama! Some people get that from eBay, but auctions have more louche, mothball-scented glamour.
They are also brilliant for the pathologically nosy. Like the celeb versions, many sales at my local are house clearances, and it’s a window into another, exotic life – how did you end up acquiring an empty Swedish pistol holster, you wonder; why so many stuffed stoats? And finally, paradoxically, they act as a brake on my own acquisitive impulses. Often, I only have to imagine someone decades hence scrolling judgmentally through my dusty bird-themed junk to step away from the bidding on the owl mug. I’ve still got my eye on a bargain bird bath tomorrow, though.
Emma Beddington is a Guardian columnist
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