Meet ‘justdiscovered’ operations manager Dave Hummel
‘A hobby turned into a job, which turned into a career’
Dave Hummel, Operations Manager for justdiscovered.
Dave Hummel may have been fated to end up in this line of work.
“People would often say to me, ‘you almost didn’t have a choice’,” says the 41-year-old who’s been immersed in antiques and collectibles his entire life by virtue of his family’s four-generations of avid collectors.
Dave is now joining forces with executives from Miller & Miller Auctions to run a new online auction house, justdiscovered, which will be handling its own auctions selling complete, intact collections.
While Miller & Miller has built its reputation on selling high-value collectibles, it has increasingly become apparent that many consignors want to sell their entire collections, not just the most valuable items. The partnership between Miller & Miller and justdiscovered will now provide those collectors with a complete and seamless full-service solution.
A glimpse inside the new justdiscovered facility in London, Ontario.
Dave will be operations manager for the London, Ontario-based auction house, bringing to the job extensive auction experience, a family lineage rich in antiquities, and a work history steeped in relevant life lessons.
For the past six years, Dave worked with Shackelton’s Auction Inc., a prominent, long-standing, family-run auction house based in Springfield, Ontario where he travelled around the country doing the listings and setting up auctions.
“Dave has a keen eye and tremendous attention to detail,” says Ethan Miller, co-owner of Miller & Miller Auctions. “And he is extremely well organized, something you need in this business.”
Originally, Dave thought he wanted to be a police officer and he got a degree in criminology and sociology. With three generations of social workers in the family it came as no surprise that he ended up in the child and youth services field, where for 11 years he worked with youth aged 12 to 16, both in open and secure custody – “the hardest-to-serve youth”. Meanwhile, he was also buying and selling antiques and collectibles on his own time. When his paternity leave ended after the birth of his first child, who’s now eight years old, he left his job and began dealing antiques full-time. He set up at major shows, had booths in antique malls and handled estate sales for several years, selling items both on site and privately.
“A hobby turned into a job, which turned into a career,” as he puts it.
But despite growing up surrounded by collections and family members who’d long had the bug, it wasn’t until he was 19 that he too became totally invested. “As a child I preferred to wait in the car when we stopped at shops and antique malls.” But one day while in Upstate New York, he got out of the car and ended up buying some antique advertising and a pair of old skis and that was it. “Twenty-two years later, I now have a passion and appreciation for anything that’s old.”
His wife Lindsey never collected anything, nor did her family, he says, but they too have gained an appreciation over the years. As for Dave, he collects general store advertising, petroliana, fruit jars, crocks and jugs, bottles and Canadiana, with a special interest in anything to do with the history of St. Thomas, Ontario, where he was born, raised and still lives today.
Dave is pictured with items from his collection, which spans general store advertising, petroliana, fruit jars, crocks, bottles and Canadiana, with a special interest in the history of his hometown of St. Thomas, Ontario.
Dave’s maternal great-grandfather also liked old things – 3,000-year-old things. James Mellon Menzies (1885-1957), born in Clinton, Ontario, was a Presbyterian missionary in China for seven years and while there voraciously studied ancient Chinese writing on bones from the Shang Dynasty, known as the Oracle bone inscriptions, the first Chinese writing system. He became the first Western expert on the inscriptions and fought to keep them in China, while foreigners were conspiring to remove them for audiences abroad. His son, Arthur Menzies, born in China, became Canada’s ambassador to China from 1976 to 1980.
In a strange twist of fate, years ago Dave’s father stumbled across a news item online which said James Mellon Menzie’s home in China was being turned into a museum devoted to his work. In 2007, Dave, his mother and sister (his father was not well enough to travel ) flew to China to see it and were greeted by a 30-piece marching band and feted with feasts. In 2008, James Mellon Menzies was featured in a Globe and Mail story about his life with the headline “The unsung Canadian some knew as ‘Old Bones’.”
James Mellon Menzies (1885–1957), Dave’s maternal great-grandfather, was a Canadian missionary and pioneering scholar of ancient Chinese oracle bone inscriptions.
Shang Dynasty oracle bones from the collection of James Mellon Menzies, now held by Museum Rietberg in Zürich, Switzerland.
Clearly, Dave has been part of an ancestry with deep and abiding ties to things that are old and of cultural significance. In fact, ever since he was 14 years old, every birthday or holiday season he was gifted a special collection or collectible by a family member. “Every item always had a story,” he remembers.
His reverence for antiques and collectibles will most definitely come into play in his job as operations manager at justdiscovered, he says. “You have to remember that some of these collections took 40 or 50 years to build. Each piece has a story for the collector and so you have to respect them all because they all mean something to the person who collected them.
“You also have to bring compassion to the job – compassion I needed in my early work with youth and which I still have today in this business. So often a collection comes to auction in a time of crisis, when someone is in ill health or when it’s being sold because the collector has died.”
Dave is prepared for what the job will entail and he’s stoked for the next step in his fated career.
“It’s the right time and the right place, for sure,” he says. “I’m extremely excited to be making this move. Miller & Miller is a phenomenal company. They’re making big waves all across the country as the best of the best. justdiscovered will create a full-service auction for collections and this is just another notch in their reputation.”
By Diane Sewell
Diane Sewell has been a writer for more than 25 years, producing feature stories for some of the country’s top newspapers and consumer magazines, as well as client newsletters and commissioned books.
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