Auction House

Bob Hooper chants without ceasing, as if in prayer in an exotic tongue, as animals skitter before his auctioneer's booth for sale to new owners who will fatten them, breed them or slaughter them.Behind him, hundreds of animals moving among wooden pens, waiting their turn in the limelight of the auctioneer's pit, answer in bellows, bleats and squeals.Hooper presides each Tuesday night over the sale of 500 to 700 animals -- cattle, sheep, pigs and goats -- at the Westminster Livestock Auction.

There it was -- 825 pounds of string tightly wound into a mammoth ball -- holding its own among marble busts of Roman emperors, a hand-carved Victorian mantle and framed works of art.Hundreds watched anxiously at a Timonium auction house yesterday as two men battled to take home the treasure -- a 4-foot-high relic of the fabled and defunct Haussner's Restaurant of Eastern Avenue."

A painting by Pierre-Auguste Renoir that was recently rediscovered appears to have been stolen from the Baltimore Museum of Art in 1951. As a result of the discovery, the FBI has begun an investigation, and an auction scheduled for Saturday morning in northern Virginia has been canceled. "Paysage Bords de Seine," a 6x10 inch view of the Seine River dating from 1879, attracted worldwide interest a few weeks ago, in part because of the romantic story behind the artwork's discovery.

The Baltimore real estate market spoke in small dollars yesterday.More than 400 buyers showed up at the Stouffer Harborplace Hotel with certified checks and visions of deals as 45 luxury condominiums at the 11-story Colonnade on University Parkway went to the auction block at noon."

It's high season for New York's big auctioneers. From now through June, there's practically a sale a day at either Christie's or Sotheby's. Sometimes both. If you've ever hankered to get in on the auction action, now is the time.Both auctioneers have been putting out the welcome mat for new buyers, in hopes they will give the market new momentum.And yet to many, the prospect of crossing the threshold of an auction house is daunting. Auctions are seen as havens for tuxedo-clad men and jewel-bedecked women who emerge from limousines to spend millions of dollars on van Goghs -- and do it in a pressure-cooker atmosphere that brooks no morning-after changes of heart.

In The Region AmeriDebt founder to appeal decision to freeze his assets AmeriDebt founder Andris Pukke plans to appeal a U.S. District Court's decision last week to freeze his assets, according to court documents. Pending the appeal, Pukke also asked the district court in Greenbelt last week to not require that he give a full accounting of his assets under oath, saying it violates his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. Pukke faces a "real and significant threat of criminal prosecution," his lawyers said in a court document.

The weak economy notwithstanding, last year antiques and collectibles buffs paid the highest prices ever for the rarest objects auctioned.While sales slowed at auctions, fairs and antiques shops, bidders flocked to those auctions where uncommon items were offered, some with choice pedigrees.Most of the records were toppled in sales held during the first half of the year, before the worldwide economy worsened and war threatened in the Middle East.Herve Aaron, who heads Didier Aaron's New York gallery, said he was certain that prices would continue to escalate for quality examples of period furniture and decorative arts.

SAN FRANCISCO -- It took just 21 seconds, one bang of a wooden mallet at the venerable Butterfields auction house on a recent day and "Reina," a diminutive, 74 million-year-old Leptoceratops had reached its highest bid: $75,000. Although such transactions occur quietly, controversy surrounding them does not: The growing sales of natural-history objects -- from trilobites and meteorites to entire dinosaur skeletons -- is stirring up museums, universities and auction houses. Reina, the most controversial item offered, was not sold that day because the $75,000 offered did not top the owner's minimum bid of $120,000.

A "lost" landscape thought to have been painted by Pierre-Auguste Renoir will go on the auction block Sept. 29 on behalf of the Baltimore-born woman who purchased the artwork at a West Virginia flea market for $7. "Paysage Bords de Seine," a 6-inch by 10-inch canvas dating from about 1879, is expected to fetch $75,000 to $100,000, according to Anne Norton Craner, the fine arts specialist for the Potomack Company, the Alexandria, Va., auction house...

Even after two decades and hundreds of real estate listings, the homes stand out in Sarah L. Sinnickson's mind -- and no wonder.You don't soon forget a 700-acre Cambridge estate with seven houses, an airstrip and a bowling alley. Or the Chestertown farm with six ponds, three waterfront houses and a stocked, 12-acre lake dotting 3 miles of shoreline.You couldn't forget the DuPont family's Eastern Shore hunting retreat. Or the European-style, 38-room Hunt Valley villa sold to Ravens owner Art Modell this year.