by Martin Willis
Back around 1983, I was working with my father at his auction gallery in Eliot, Maine. It was a small, regional auction house called Seaboard Auction Gallery. We had auctions every few weeks on Thursday evenings. There was always a huge crowd of buyers and it was a nice social event. We were one of the few auction galleries operating in the area at that time, and our consignments came from local estates and homes. The phone always rang and we had our hands full. Now, the seacoast area is inundated with auctioneers and the pie is sliced rather thin these days.