It was last call for Herb Hunt.
The longtime auctioneer looked over the table of merchandise laid out before him. No Victorian jewelry, no Limoges vases, no rare coins. The best of the lot was some dented tin boxes, an orange sewing basket and a couple of cheap ashtrays.
“For the last time . . .” Hunt announced, “I sold it. Five dollars to Bidder No. 35. We’re all done.”
After an estimated 800-plus auctions over 30 years, Hunt’s Auction Service, run by Herb and his wife, Donna, was closing up shop. The Hunts, both 62, are retiring and moving to Florida.
For the last 20 years or so, Hunt’s has been located in a former hardware store on Main Street in Sugar Grove. Customers would pack the place two or three times a month — the auctions went outside when weather permitted — looking for treasures. And more.
For many of the regulars, the show was the thing. That’s part of the reason they became regulars.
“You could come here and have a good time,” said Ron Christoffel of Somonauk, a fixture at nearly every Hunt’s auction. “It was family entertainment, and you’d get a bargain once in a while.”
“It’s a little bit of everything,” Bill Kroupa of Sugar Grove said, explaining why he seldom missed a sale. “There are definitely bargains here. A lot of dealers come here and fill their shops. And there are a lot of eBayers here, probably. And you get the entertainment from Pinky.”
Pinky is Pedro Zepeda of Aurora, who has worked with the Hunts for nearly 20 years.
“They’re very good people,” he said before the finale. “Herb is laid-back and very knowledgeable. And Donna is a workhorse. There’d be an item I’d be afraid to lift up, afraid of being hurt. But she’d pick it up with no trouble. They’re good people.”
In the two decades they worked together, Herb, Donna and Pinky scripted a pretty good show. When a purse would come up for auction, Pinky would slip his bankroll into it. Then he’d open it, act surprised and show the crowd the wad of cash he had just “found.” If there was a mirror to sell, he’d hold it up in front of an unsuspecting customer and announce, “Hey, look at the monkey!” Herb and Donna would snipe at each other — OK, she did most of the sniping — and he’d give her a “Yes, dear” and go back to selling. Customers became an audience.
“I always say it’s hard to do this because we have to rehearse all this stuff,” Herb said, repeating another line heard at almost every auction. But, he added, there was a reason for keeping things light.
“We like to relieve the tension. Sometimes you’ll see an auction, and it’s so tense. But we get people to laugh and loosen up. And maybe then they’ll have a tendency to spend more money.”
Hunt’s roots go back to when Herb and Donna were dating (their 42nd anniversary was last month). They went to the Blue Moon, a legendary restaurant/tavern in Elgin.
“We got there, and they were having an auction in the dining room,” Herb recalled. “The guy who was supposed to help didn’t show up. I’d been going to auctions since I was 8 years old, so I asked [the auctioneer] if she needed help, holding things up. She was selling, and after a while she lost her voice. Honest to God, she just handed me the mike and I took over. Another auctioneer came in and said afterward, ‘Where do you sell out of?’ ‘I don’t.’ ‘How’d you like a job?'”
He worked at various auctions and eventually started his own coin auction business, running it out of the old hardware store. The auctions were a success, but when the coin market started slowing, Hunt’s became an antiques auction house.
Of course, not everything that passed through qualified as an antique. For every daguerreotype there were probably five or six hayracks weighed down with lamp shades, rusty yard tools and old glassware.
That was also part of the allure. Connie Wilson, who lives just down the street, has been attending for about 10 years, buying up boxes of things no one else would bid on. Some of it she keeps, some ends up on eBay.
“But the majority I put in my yard sale,” she said. “I buy up all the leftover lots. Once a year, during [Sugar Grove’s] Corn Boil, we get a lot of traffic, and I have this huge sale.”
A most memorable purchase? Last year her 21-year-old son bought six Disney figurines for $4. After a little research, he realized he had something. He consigned them to a large auction house that sold them for more than $9,000.
Everyone has stories about the stuff they’ve seen at Hunt’s. Even Donna.
“The most unusual thing we sold, it was a baby casket,” she said. “It was scary. It had the glass window in it. The couple wanted it for Halloween.”
Another time a consignor brought in some World War II German memorabilia, which the Hunts displayed in their window.
“A lady comes in whose mother was in a concentration camp,” Donna said. “And she asked that we take that stuff out of the window.”
It wasn’t a difficult decision, Herb said.
“Old Nazi flags sell good. But what are you going to do? These people are your neighbors, your friends.”
That wasn’t auctioneer double-talk. It was sincere.
Ask anyone about Herb and Donna, and the first thing they bring up is their honesty. People would leave absentee bids and blank checks, trusting Donna to bid for them and fill in the amount.
“They wouldn’t cheat anyone out of a nickel,” said Don Flynn of Sugar Grove, a retired auctioneer. “They’re not pulling bids from the air, and there’s no reserve when they’re selling things.”
On this final Sunday, about 70 customers showed up for the start of the auction — the number eventually grew to more than 100 — which didn’t begin until after some preliminaries.
Donna introduced current and former Hunt’s workers, as well as Bev Callison and members of her staff, who’ll be taking over the Hunts’ old building as Callison Auction Services (callisonauction.com). Callison, who’ll be keeping on Pinky and a couple other of Hunt’s staffers, read a poem she had written to Herb and Donna.
“I hope I don’t cry,” she said, getting as far as the title before choking up.
“I’m speechless,” said Herb, who seldom is, afterward. “I don’t know what to say. I’m going inside to sell some jewelry.”
And so the sale began, Donna out in front auctioning off books, furniture and a spiffy 1979 Garelli moped, Herb inside behind the jewelry case. In many ways, it was a typical auction. Quick, loud and entertaining. (“One of them is signed,” Herb noted as three framed prints came up for bid. “I can sign the other ones too,” Pinky said to him, just loud enough to be heard by the crowd.)
Halfway through the afternoon, Herb said, “I’m gonna slow down because I don’t want this to end.”
But some 4 1/2 hours after the sale began, he was down to that last table.
Once it was gone, there was a last bit of business. Auction tables were draped with tablecloths, chairs were redeployed, a 40-pound cake was brought out, customers — friends — brought out a variety of covered dishes, and Herb and Donna hosted a farewell celebration.
Now it’s off to Florida. Herb’s Illinois auctioneer license is also good down there, so he may get back in the game. Or maybe he’ll be on the other side of the table.
“I might stop by on occasion,” he said of his retirement plans. “I’ll sit in the back and bid everybody up.”
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In the Web edition
Listen in on the Hunts’ final auSction and see more photos at chicago tribune.com/auction.
bhageman@tribune.com
