Antiques Shopping, Uruguayan Style

Last month’s road trip took us to the eastern edge of Uruguay, to Chuy, the Brazilian border, Fortin San Miguel and Treinta y Tres. So for a change of scenery this time we traveled west, towards Argentina. Our excuse to hit the road this time was a grand estate sale outside a sleepy town in the department of Colonia, called Ombues de Lavalle.

When I was a kid, we would sometimes go to auctions in Pennsylvania, the home state of my Pennsylvania-Dutch family. My Grandmother, aunt and cousin still go to these sales. The custom there is to auction off a house and most of its contents instead of just selling the house through a conventional realtor. They call them “sales” in Pennsylvania and publish flyers advertising them. Sales are often whole day events and are just as much a social and entertainment event as a buying opportunity. Our family home, sadly, was sold in this manner. I wasn’t at all surprised to find that the same is done here in Uruguay. Here, they are called “remates”. It could be Pennsylvania –simply substitute paisanos (country people, who foreigners mistake for gauchos because they wear the traditional gaucho clothing) in their baggy gaucho pants, wide belts, leather hats and gaucho boots for Amish and Mennonite men in black suits, straw hats and ladies in long dresses and bonnets. (I regret not taking any pictures of the paisanos. Yet again, I erred on the side of politeness and respectfulness, not good traits in a photographer, plus I hesitate to photograph a cow-hand with a dagger tucked into his belt. I'll work on being less shy on future outings).

I think this particular remate was an unusual one for its size and the quality of the items. In contrast, check out the heap of junk for sale at the first remate Cesar went to in Uruguay. I’m glad I passed on that one. So, just like the Pennsylvania sales, this remate had a glossy flyer with the details and pictures of the most photogenic or desirable items. An auction house was hired to manage the event. An event it was – at 9am it began with the auctioning of farm equipment, it then progressed to different locations around the property to sell off smaller farming tools, odds and ends and common things like cook pots and knick-knacks. The main event, scheduled to start at 6pm, in typical Uruguayo style did not start until 8pm. Before sunset, we gathered in plastic lawn chairs before a large screen set up just outside of the main house.

The auctioneers warmed up the crowd by dispatching a few small items while people walked around serving the crowd complimentary cold soda or Johnny Walker Red on ice. Later there were free sausages and meat cooked over a fire nearby. A lot of people, probably from the nearby town, seemed to know each other and had a ball just watching and commenting on the items for sale. Mixed in the crowd were some serious antique hunters who clearly came for specific items and bidded assertively on them and left when the item was in their possession or in the hands of a competitor. As darkness fell, the remate went high-tech. A team with a video camera and lights went around the inside of the house to project each item on the large screen outside as the auctioneer in front of us did his job.

The items the crowd seemed most interested in were some antique gaucho accoutrements, such as ornamental daggers, boleadoras, a horse’s headstall and bit beautifully decked out in silver, solid silver stirrups and two beautiful and old gaucho coin belts, one of which fetched $20,000 pesos (about $1000 US).

We came away with a fascinating antique Uruguayan-made balance scale with silver feet, a wood body and marble top for $8000 pesos.

By this time it was past midnight. When we left at 1:30am the crowd had thinned and the auctioneer was trying not to yawn, but there were quite a few smaller items left. The thing I coveted was this dining table which went unsold as there were no bites at its base price of $35,000 pesos.