BCA Brighouse

June 2018 marked the 45th birthday celebration of BCA Brighouse, just off the M62. While it may not be the biggest, poshest, best located or most exciting of auctions, it’s still my favourite. My gaffer and I used to attend the Monday morning sale and the closed Rover sales one Thursday every month. Maybe it’s because I never attended the sales of the cheaper stuff that the auction remains prestige to me. The place was always manic. It was the first time I’d seen two halls running simultaneously and you’d be given short shift at the key office if your paperwork wasn’t right.

For a sheltered northern lad, this place resembled the big outside world, such was the diverse ethnic make-up of the buyers and staff. Likewise, the stock was utterly diverse and there was always loads to whet your imagination.

If the going was good, we wouldn’t eat in the ground floor café between the halls and by the netties. We’d be eating upstairs, where waiters took your order and alcohol flowed. No cigarette smoke to ruin your suit in there, just thick cigar smoke. Even the current Mrs Ward was once taken there as payment for being a driver for a day. Helicopters would land, the occupants of which would shake my gaffer’s hand and ask how SAAB Turbo values were holding up. I’d be given something fancy to drive home (always a Rover), while cars we’d not even bid for would arrive on a transporter ‘as a favour’.

These days, located as it is in the ‘Rhubarb Triangle’, Brighouse is just one of two BCA sites, sandwiched between a Manheim and the wonderfully friendly Independent Auction Group.