The Maine Auctioneers Association hosted its annual meeting on Friday, January 13, at the Samoset Resort, when members inducted Central Maine country auctioneer Arthur Julia into the Maine Auctioneer’s Hall of Fame.

Julia, now semiretired, began his auction business in the mid 1960s, and is the father of auctioneer James D. Julia. When interviewed about his Dad, Jim relayed a number of stories of those early days in the auction business.

“In the beginning my Dad and Mom started the auction business as a means of disposing of the vast array of difficult-to-sell items that they regularly acquired when they bought out an estate. Eventually, people began to consign things to my Dad, and one Saturday night at the Fairfield Center Grange my Dad stopped mid-cadence and looked at the man in the front row who had just bid and announced, ‘Sir, you cannot bid on this item, it’s yours.’ To which the man responded, ‘Well I ain’t gonna let my stuff go cheap.’ Arthur immediately retorted, ‘You have no worries here sir, because we are not going to sell any of your things.’ And with a flourish he instructed the staff to move this man’s consignments off to the side, and that they would not be sold.”

Jim continued, “My six brothers and sisters and I regularly worked almost all of these auctions and were continually exposed to these examples of honesty and fair dealing and this approach became instilled in us and has served us all well ever since.”

When presented the award, Arthur thanked the Maine Auctioneer’s Association and then added, “I attended an awards banquet one night, and a friend who was being honored gave an acceptance speech that I thought most appropriate; it began like this, “A speech should be kind of like a woman’s skirt, long enough to cover the most important subject and short enough to maintain interest.” With that, he reiterated, “Thank you” and sat down.

Jim stated that his father was now 79 years old still helps out in the business, “My dad still auctions on a regular basis at my sister and her husband’s country auctions, Jeanine and Steve Poulin, and his style, approach and entertaining manner has not changed a bit.” James was inducted into the Maine Auctioneers Hall of Fame two years ago and was in attendance with many other members of the Julia family for the presentation of the award.

The Maine Auctioneer’s Association also recognized (posthumously) another patriarch of the auction business, Robert Foster, Sr. Accepting the award was Robert Sr’s son and well-known Maine auctioneer Robert Foster, Jr. Bob Foster, Sr, from Round Pond, Maine, was an extraordinarily colorful Maine auctioneer who also traveled to the Southwest and bought turquoise and Indian artifacts for his Maine antique shop. Robert Jr concluded his talk by remembering that his father studied to be a lawyer at one time, mined for gold in various parts of the country, was a lobster fisherman and about 50 other things during the course of his lifetime.