NOVEMBER 2010 AUCTIONEER
By Bryan Scribner
editor
New Hampshire changes its rules for auction licensing Jan. 1.
Legislators in September passed House Bill 598, which places new controls on the way in which Auctioneers are regulated in the state, in particular focusing on licensing law related to selling assets via the Internet and through benefit auctions.
The New Hampshire Board of Auctioneers has worked along with the New Hampshire Auctioneers Association to revise the law for more than three years. The association's President, Russ Abbott of the Atlantic Auction Co., Chichester, N.H., says the law had not had a significant rewrite since the late 1960s.
The new law places restrictions on individuals who help others sell assets on websites such as eBay. Abbott says if "online trading assistants" want to promote their services as auctions or a type of auctioneering, they must now attain auction licenses.
The bill stipulates that no Auctioneer license is required for people selling their own personal property through the competitive bidding process. Further, it allows unlicensed individuals to sell items they do not own, via the Internet, and collect associated fees only if they meet these conditions:
• They do not represent themselves as Auctioneers or as being able to perform auction services
• They do not convey the impression in their name, advertising or title they are licensed as Auctioneers
A ceremony signing the bill into law took place Sept. 10, and it included National Auctioneers Association members Abbott; Jay St. Jean of James R. St. Jean Auctioneers, Manchester, N.H.; and Dick Berman of Berman Real Estate & Auctioning Ine., Nashua, N.H.
Berman, a member of the New Hampshire Board of Auctioneers for six years, says the New Hampshire Auctioneers Association was an important contributor to the legislative achievement.
Like Abbott, Berman says HB 598 gives the Board of Auctioneers authority to protect the public from individuals posing as Auctioneers.
Berman says the New Hampshire Board previously had no authority over unlicensed Auctioneers. These "Auctioneers" would condu~t auctions, and the Board would get complaints, but Berman says there was nothing the Board could do.
The Board was concerned New Hampshire citizens seeking assistance for the sale of their assets would deal with individuals falsely representing themselves as Auctioneers, Berman says. If dishonest or unethical, these seller assistants would place the state's auction profession in a bad light.
"They can sell on eBay and hold themselves out to be a trader and whatever they want ... just as long as they're not getting anything in there that implies that they're Auctioneers," he says.
The bill also clarifies that charity auctions can be conducted without a license only by an individual who "is not a member of the organization (charitable, educational, religious or other nonprofit) solely for the purpose of conducting the charity auction, and so long as the individual receives no compensation or other consideration for conducting the auction."
In addition to the stipulations on Internet and benefit auctions, the new law raises the state's auction license bond and places increased emphasis on professional conduct, Abbott says. It also changes the definition of an auction as viewed by the state. The new definition now incorporates the phrase "competitive bids" in the following:
"'Auction' means the sale of real or personal property, or both, in which the sale price of the property offered is increased by competitive bids until the highest accepted bidder becomes the purchaser, pursuant to RSA 311-B."
Following this legislative achievement, Berman offers his support to the entire auction industry.
"Anything that we have done that can help any of the other Boards or Auctioneers throughout the states, we'd be very happy to give them information," Berman says.