Really In Our Element 12-19-25

We really felt like we were swimming in the right pool today. I made a run to the supermarche to get fresh fruit while Deb was getting ready. With that taken care of we took the Metro down to the Grand Boulevards. It’s the street with almost all the best department stores in Paris. We don’t normally bother with this area much but today was an exception, well two exceptions to be fair.

Exception number one was our visit to our first street Brocante since arriving. It was held along a couple blocks on one side of the street. It was identified as being a professional Brocante market. So we were dealing with vendors who try to make their living doing the street markets. Generally we prefer the street markets which combine the Brocantes with Vide-Grenier sellers (flea marketers) but you have to take what’s on offer not necessarily what your first choice would be. The weather was more cool and cloudy than the past few days but not cold, so strolling through was very nice. We did find things that were interesting but nothing that had us ripping out our wallets to pay.  Still it tunes up your eye and gets you thinking about what may turn up.  When we finished going through our timing was almost perfect for the second exception.

Our market was less than 2 blocks from the Hotel Druout, the premier auction house in all of France. Over the years we have developed an ongoing interest in visiting this institution. They don’t function like any auction house with which we are familiar in the U.S. because they don’t actually conduct auctions. They provide a venue for the many ‘experts’ that have businesses clustered around their site. The experts meet with potential sellers of goods and provide appraisal and selling services. Once they have a sufficient amount of consigned goods they contract with Druout for a room in which to display and auctions the items they have amassed. The auctions themselves are unlike any we have in the U.S. too. Primarily because, as a buyer,  I can walk into any auction without ceremony and if I see something I like I can bid on it. I don’t register nor do I have a number, however if I win the item the auctioneer comes directly to me and collects for the item. If I’m well known to the auctioneer they will put it on my account and I pay at the end. If on the other hand I’m not known, they get my credit card and give me the Item I just won. 

When I’m ready to leave I go up and consummate  the transaction and take my card and the item with me. As far as bidding goes I better be paying attention, the bid showing on the monitor is what the current bid is, so if I hold up my hand I’m agreeing to the next price increase. And it’s all in rapid French! I have bought a few things in the past and it’s great fun. Of course I never know if I won until they bring the item to me and ask for my credit card. I put this picture to show something both Deb and I noticed. The computer picture from the catalog  is on the right and shows the current bidding, while the painting itself is on the left. The colors on the catalog picture are really juiced up. So unless you’re in the room bidding you don’t really have a good idea of what 

you’re potentially buying. I would be pissed if  I thought I was buying a painting as vivid as a Sorolla and I ended up with a picture that looked like it had been exposed to the sun for 50 years. Virtually every painting had the same mismatch. Caveat emptor! There were four auctions going on simultaneously today, but they have eleven auction rooms. If you’re a serious buyer you have to pick your auctions carefully or bounce back and forth.  Most are specialty auctions geared towards a limited type of offering, like paintings, prints and sculpture or furniture and decorative items. But often there will be literally garage sale auctions too. Conversely we went to one that was only Rodin sculptures. Druout does them all.

Afterwards we walked a few blocks and caught a bus back to our neighborhood where we bought a roast chicken, fresh bread, a cold white wind and had dinner at the apartment. We kind of demolished it before I remembered to take a picture.