New Hampshire’s public auction house — “Spreading Joy through Material Culture.”
Everything you need to know about how our auctions work, visiting our hall, and buying with us. Have a question we didn’t answer? Email hello@graniteunionauction.com or call (603) 451-6960.
Bidder & Consignment Terms
Bidder Terms & Conditions
Bidding is a binding contract. Our full Bidder Terms cover registration, bidding and absentee rules, buyer’s premium, invoicing and payment, pickup and shipping, condition and returns, and conduct — everything that governs a sale.
Have something to sell? We accept quality antiques, estates, collections, and the interesting odds and ends in between to sell in our auctions. We’ll handle cataloguing, marketing, and the sale. We take a commission and send you a check for your share after the auction.
We run auctions in person and online across three primary formats.
In-Person Antique Auctions
Franklin, NH — Upper Hall
Our flagship format: traditional live auctions in the upper hall of our Franklin, NH auction house, where buyers inspect the goods in person and bid in the room. Most sales also carry a published catalog with photographs and online absentee bidding for those who can't attend (it closes one hour before the sale), but live bidding happens in person only and the event is not live-streamed. Lots are called by room order rather than lot number, and you can ask a runner to bring up a lot you're waiting for. The best of the best — and most of it isn’t available for shipping, because these are community events first and foremost. Come hang out with us and take your treasures home!
In-Person Discovery Auctions
Franklin, NH — Lower Hall
High-energy in-person sales in the lower hall, where box lots, large groupings, furniture, and single items are sold fast-paced to the highest bidder. The room is organized into sections, and the lots in each section are offered on choice: the winning bidder chooses as many lots as they wish at their high-bid price, and the bidding rounds in each section continue until everything is sold. No catalog and no online bidding — everything goes home with its buyer the same day.
Online Antiques & Oddities Auctions
Online — livestreamed
Our flagship online format, held once or twice a month. Each lot is meticulously photographed, described, and published in a digital catalog with online absentee bidding before the live sale; then the auction is live-streamed to a chat room, where buyers bid in real time from our website as the auctioneer calls it. A tightly curated smalls auction — items that grab the eye, ship easily, and draw bidders from all over the country.
The full rules
Registration, how absentee and live bidding work, bid increments, choice rounds, reserves, invoicing, pickup windows, shipping rates and insurance — everything that governs a sale is in our Bidder Terms.
Every auction — in person and online — carries a 15% buyer’s premium on the hammer price: buy something for $100 and you’ll pay $115. Pay without a card and it’s 13% — cash or check at the desk, or Zelle when paying an invoice online.
Paying
In person: check out at the desk when you’re done bidding, before you leave. Cash, check, or card. If you placed absentee bids online and come to the auction, you can settle everything at the desk and take it all home that day.
Online: an invoice arrives by email right after the sale and is due within 24 hours. Pay through our checkout by card, PayPal, Venmo, Afterpay, or Zelle. Zelle is not accepted at the desk.
Taking Your Winnings Home
Lots won in person
Everything you buy at an in-person auction is yours to take home the day of the sale, once you’ve paid — and that includes lots you won on absentee bids placed online, if you’re there in person: settle up at the desk and take it all with you. Anything left behind must be collected from the auction house in Franklin within one week; after that a storage fee of $5 per lot per day applies. In-person lots are generally for pickup in Franklin only.
Lots won online
When you register for an online auction you choose shipping, or pickup in Franklin or Jaffrey with a day and time — changeable at checkout or from your account. Changing your pickup location selection after registration can delay pickup by up to 7 business days.
Franklin (58 South Main Street) — pickup on posted pickup days; see the schedule. A quick courtesy text to (603) 451-6960 helps us have your order ready.
Jaffrey (385 Squantum Road) — by appointment only; call or text with at least two hours’ notice.
Whichever way you won, anything not retrieved within 60 days is forfeited without refund.
Shipping
In-person auctions: lots are generally for local pickup only, though some are marked as eligible for shipping — check before you bid. We’re happy to accommodate third-party shipping if you handle the logistics and payment. Discovery auction items generally aren’t available for shipping.
Online auctions: every lot ships nationwide, in-house. We aim to ship by the Wednesday or Thursday after the auction, and tracking is emailed automatically. Shipping insurance is optional at checkout; without it, no refund is available for transit damage or lost packages. Use Open Box to hold several wins and ship them together.
The full rules
Invoicing deadlines, your card on file, pickup and removal, shipping rates and timelines, insurance, Open Box, and condition and returns — the details behind all of this are in our Bidder Terms.
Our auction house is a 1917 brick building in Franklin, New Hampshire — originally the Christian Church of Franklin, later home to Meridian Lodge No. 60 of the Free and Accepted Masons. All of our public auctions are held here, in two event halls — one on each floor.
Two Halls
Upper Hall (Main Level) — our antique auctions, in a former lodge room with soaring ceilings and comfortable seating. Merchandise is out for preview, runners carry each lot around the room during the sale, and item images with brief descriptions appear on monitors at the front of the room.
Lower Hall (Lower Level) — our discovery auctions, a high-energy standing-room format with minimal seating available for those who’d like it.
Registration, checkout, concessions, and the cinema box office are all on the main level. Always enter through the main entrance and register on the main level. (Customers who need step-free access may enter directly on the lower level — see Accessibility.)
Restrooms are available on both floors — the upper (main) level and the lower level.
Concessions
Concessions are on the main floor in the reception room, alongside registration and checkout. We offer assorted snacks, soft drinks, and freshly popped popcorn — all $2.00 each, self-serve from the snack cabinet and drink cooler, paid at the registration desk. Registered bidders can charge snacks to their bidder number by showing their bid card; those charges go on your auction bill and are itemized on a separate receipt at checkout. No buyer’s premium applies to concessions. Hot coffee and filtered water are always complimentary.
House Rules
No smoking inside the facility. Please smoke outdoors only and use the ashtrays provided, and please don’t discard cigarette butts on the ground.
Drug-free facility. We are a strictly drug-free facility.
First aid. A self-serve first aid kit is available for customers and staff on the main level, in the fire stairwell. Narcan is on site — at the first aid kit and on each floor.
We recycle. Paper, cardboard, and plastic go in the blue recycle bins; please don’t put trash in them. The City of Franklin does not accept glass recyclables, so glass goes in the trash.
Our Jaffrey Warehouse
Separately, our warehouse at 385 Squantum Road, Jaffrey, NH 03452 serves as our business mailing address and a pickup point for online-only lots and select items (by appointment). Send any mailed consignments here. Public auctions are not held in Jaffrey.
Parking
Street parking is your best option — there’s ample parking on both sides of South Main Street. Lot parking at the building is extremely limited.
If you’re approaching from the south, park well before the building: there’s a busy intersection just past us, and if you overshoot you’ll need to park on the far side and come back.
Side lot (to the left of the building, just before the bridge) — a small lot we share with the State of New Hampshire. Very limited; handicap spaces here are reserved for customers attending events in the Upper Hall.
Rear lot (behind the building) — reserved for handicap access to the lower level and for loading only. Parking behind the building is not permitted during auction hours except for these purposes.
Accessibility
The building has a handicap ramp to the main entrance on the main level, and ground-level entrances on the lower level.
There is no step-free way to move between floors inside the building — the only route between levels is outside (up the driveway). Because of this:
Park based on where your event is being held. Handicap parking is reserved in the side lot for Upper Hall events, and the rear lot provides handicap access to the lower level.
If you’re attending an event in the Lower Hall (or buying cinema tickets or concessions for a lower-level event) and need step-free access, please ask a staff member to register you, or to handle your ticket and concession purchases, so you don’t have to change floors.
You’re always welcome to enter on the main level and take the driveway down to the lower level, whichever works best for you.
Our auction house at 58 South Main Street has anchored Franklin for more than a century — and it has worn a few hats along the way.
The Christian Church of Franklin was organized in 1838, and its first building — which held the town’s first town hall in its basement — stood on this ground until fire destroyed it in the early hours of March 21, 1917. The present brick building, admired for its masonry and stained glass, rose in its place and was dedicated in 1918. In 1981 it became the meeting hall of Meridian Lodge No. 60 of the Free and Accepted Masons, chartered in Franklin in 1856. Today it’s our auction house.
The building keeps its own relics: a bell first cast in 1839 and recast twice (its surface records every crack and recasting), a four-faced Town Clock that once lit South Main Street from a 60-foot tower, and an Estey pipe organ later rebuilt into a small “Unit Orchestra.” The leaning tower was saved — and rebuilt to a single story — in 2008.
The Full History
The fire and the rebuilding, the cornerstone box sealed in 1917, the bell’s inscription, the town clock, the Masonic renovation, the organ conversion, and the 2008 tower restoration — drawn from committee records, city correspondence, a bell inscription, and contemporary newspaper accounts.
A cinema in our basement — a proper little movie house taking shape on the lower level. Tickets and concessions will be handled at the box office on the main floor.
Like the classic joke starts, a film nerd and a math buff walk into an auction hall…
Ryan studied film and philosophy. Liza studied mathematics. Between the two of us, we had pretty much zero plans to become antique dealers and auctioneers.
Ryan spent a decade in Boston and Somerville, where in 2016 he opened Memory Hole Vintage inside the historic Somerville Journal Building — a proper storefront, a room full of things that had somewhere else to be before they found their way to him. When he wandered in one day, then-mayor Joe Curtatone described it as a “very Somerville” kind of store — and Somerville agreed, awarding it Best Neighborhood Shop – Union Square in Best of Boston 2019. Ryan ran the shop until 2020, when a planned move to New Hampshire — just before the world stopped — proved fortuitous.
In New Hampshire, Memory Hole kept going. Ryan took the business online — selling through the shop’s website and on Instagram — alongside a run of now locally famous barn sales at our Jaffrey property: real, seasonal, show-up-and-dig affairs that gave early shape to what we were building. (That barn is now our warehouse, and Jaffrey remains our home base.) In late 2021, Ryan started running auctions on Instagram Live — scrappy, real-time, building an audience lot by lot. Frustrated by the platform’s limitations, he set out to build one of his own — custom auction infrastructure purpose-built for how we actually work: live events, online catalogs, discovery formats, and everything in between — and earned his auctioneer’s license along the way.
When Ryan and Liza met a couple years down the road (on a dating app for vegans and vegetarians — thanks Veggly!), big things started to happen. With Liza’s book smarts and business savvy (and, if Ryan’s being honest, a sudden drive to impress her) the business grew faster in their first year together than it had in all the years before. And one rainy night on a beach in Cape Cod — our first beach trip as a married couple, improbably under a rainbow — we sketched out what it could become.
That conversation became Granite Union Auction Company.
Somehow both paths — the movies and the math — led to the same place: two people in New Hampshire, married, trying to find the right home for things that deserve one. It’s the same conviction Memory Hole was built on — that a $30 lot can be just as interesting as a $3,000 one, and that the small, strange, uncategorizable things deserve as much care as the showpieces.
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