Auction house closure end of era for family

Ailsa and John Thomson, ex Thomson Bagley auctioneers, surrounded by news clippings of their time in the auction house. Photo / John Stone

What does a 12-year-old boy sliding down a produce shoot at a vegetable market in the 1930 have in common with computers? Not a lot - in fact, John Thomson still cannot stand computers.

Mr Thomson and his wife Ailsa are one of the last links - certainly the oldest link - with the Thomson Bagley Auction House which closed recently in Whangarei. Mr Thomson's father Eric set up the business in 1923 with Les Bagley. The business retained the name even after Mr Bagley left.

The first iteration of the business was in a three-floor building opposite the former Town Hall on Bank St. Bags of potatoes, onion, carrots and other produce were auctioned off on the second floor and then dropped down a wooden shoot to waiting trucks on the ground floor. "Sometimes the drivers would get a surprise to see a young boy among the bags of produce," said Mr Thomson.

Furniture was sold on the top floor and, as well as a distribution centre, hens and other domestic fowl were sold by the cage lot on the the ground floor.

"I remember one assistant auctioneer, a well-dressed Englishman, swearing in German after a hen he had been holding made a mess of his shirt and tie," Mr Thomson said with a laugh.

When he was 17 (at the end of WWII), he started work in the family business, initially in the farm machinery outlet, which sold milking machines, separators, pumps, disks and harrows. He later spent two years in the South Island, installing farm machinery throughout the whole island.

When he returned to Whangarei, he took over the farm machinery side of the business.

"I wanted to be a farmer but my father convinced me that wasn't right for me."

His father also established a thriving real estate business, of which Mr Thomson became a part - he became a licensed agent, but opted to focus on auctioneering, on the advice of friends and his wife Ailsa.

Retired auctioneer John Thomson has no idea how many items were sold under this gavel - partly because it was handed down by John's father Eric, one of the founders of Thomson Bagley.

He had married Ailsa in 1953 and, as well as raising their three children (Brenda, Craig and Kay), she helped in the business as a bookkeeper, eventually working full-time once Kay had finished high school.

He described her as "the best bookkeeper in the world", and she had to be, especially when Thomson and Bagley acted for the refinery company in the mid-1980s, selling furniture from houses of former refinery employees who had returned home, often off-shore. "We would have the auction on a Friday and Ailsa would work over the weekend to get the inventory sorted so the refinery rep could pick up a cheque on the Monday."

As well as the end of the refinery expansion in the mid-1980s, Thomson Bagley has been involved in some big auctions, few bigger than that held after a flood devastated the Whangarei CBD in 1956. There was so much damaged goods and fittings from retailers hit by the floods that the auction was held in the former A and P building, in what is now the Town Basin parking area.

"There were three of us supposed to be selling for three days but the other two auctioneers dropped out after two days and I had to finish the third day by myself - it was hard work but so much went under the hammer at that time."

He recalls when deceased estates and businesses such as hotels were sold in situ rather than at the auction house.

"We would go from room to room, selling everything in the room before moving on."

Even with the advent of computers, the couple preferred to do their accounts the old fashioned way - pen and paper. And they still don't have a computer in the house.

Ironically, Thomson Bagley Auctions, under Morris Cutforth who bought the house from Mr Thomson in 1987, was the first in the country to computerise auction contents.

Mr Thomson says he is very sad to see the end of Thomson Bagley, adding it is the end of an era.