In this episode of the No Reserve Podcast, Tim sits down with Thomas Blackmon Jr. of Blackmon Auctions to talk through the company's history and its April 2026 sale to Ritchie Bros.

Blackmon Auctions traces back to 1937 when Thomas's grandfather Eddie Blackmon stepped in to run a cattle barn auction in DeWitt, Arkansas after the original auctioneer was run out of town. The business moved into construction equipment auctions in the 1970s and settled at its current yard in Lonoke, Arkansas in 1998. Thomas took over from his father starting around 2010 and bought the company outright in 2013.

Thomas walks through what the business grew into over the decades, including agricultural and construction equipment, bankruptcy auctions, and a long-running relationship with the rail industry that started with a call from Norfolk Southern in 1981. In 2025, the company ran 78 auctions across 22 states with a crew of 30.

The conversation moves into the decision to sell. Thomas describes two years of talking with private equity groups and another auction company before Ritchie Bros reached out in July of last year. He explains why he passed on private equity funding, what the due diligence process looked like, and how the deal closed on April 13, 2026. He also talks openly about the emotional side of selling a business his grandfather started and his father built, and what's stayed the same for customers and staff since the acquisition.

Later in the episode, Thomas and Tim talk about a shift he's noticed at live auctions, with more buyers in their twenties showing up in person rather than bidding online only. Thomas closes with where he sees his own role heading now that the company is part of Ritchie Bros.

Links:

• Blackmon Auctions
• Ritchie Bros. and Blackmon Auctions partnership announcement

In this episode of the No Reserve Podcast, host Tim Peters sits down with Mike "McGavel" Jones. Mike is the owner and driving force behind the Auction Academy Network, which includes three schools: America's Auction Academy, the Worldwide College of Auctioneering, and the Nashville Auction School. He's the 1998 International Auctioneer Champion, served as the 56th president of the National Auctioneers Association, and was inducted into both the NAA Hall of Fame (2012) and the Texas Auctioneers Hall of Fame, making him the first person ever to complete the NAA Triple Crown.

Mike walks Tim through his entire career arc, starting an auction gig his junior year of high school, working nights in radio to pay the bills, and landing his big break liquidating hundreds of Western Auto and Montgomery Ward retail stores throughout the '80s. From there he moved into industrial and manufacturing asset sales in the '90s, spent over a decade running the auction division at United Country Real Estate, and eventually built out his own network of auction schools.

The conversation closes on where the industry is headed: Mike's hybrid education model, a mix of in-person intensives and online instruction from some of the biggest names in auctioneering, and his belief that the combination of live and online simulcast auctions delivers the best results for sellers.

• America's Auction Academy (Dallas/Ft. Worth, TX)
• World Wide College of Auctioneering (Des Moines, IA)
• Nashville Auction School (Nashville, TN)

John John Genovese of Malama Auctions joins host Tim Peters for this episode of the No Reserve Podcast. John John shares how he and his dad co-founded the company on Kauai 13 years ago, going to auction school together as first-generation auctioneers and running their very first sale out of items they found for free on Craigslist and the side of the road.

He walks through what it actually means to run an auction business on the smallest of Hawaii's four major islands, where 70,000 people are completely water locked with no highways or ferries connecting them to anywhere else. The early years were pure grassroots. John John and his dad hit every Lions Club, Rotary, and chamber of commerce meeting they could find, then walked neighborhoods handing out postcards by hand because they couldn't afford the postage. That door-to-door community outreach, more notification than sales pitch, is what built their reputation.

John John gets into the transition that reshaped the business: moving from live and simulcast auctions to online only. He noticed people standing in the room with a bidder card in hand, then quietly bidding from their phones instead. Life got in the way of people sitting through an eight-hour sale, and once he realized he was pouring time and money into something his community no longer valued, he flipped the switch. He talks about the pushback that came with it, the advice to make your best sale the transition sale, and why the people who swore they'd never come back showed up anyway.

The conversation covers the parts of the business that only make sense in Hawaii. Inter-island travel runs around $200 round trip per person, so you can't just take any sale anywhere, and most items have to sell to the population on the island they're already on. That geography pushed John John toward two things that kept the company lean: a collaborated auction model, where sellers handle the physical labor while Malama runs the marketing, invoicing, and scheduling, and a hard focus on reputation in a place where you'll see every buyer again at the one Walmart and the one Home Depot.

John John also talks about 808 Auctions, his newer brand built around Chinese equipment, trucks, and commercial assets, split out by asset class so it doesn't get lumped in with his estate and household bidders. He's opened a second yard on Maui, is working with partners on Oahu and the Big Island, and is candid about why he's building toward a lifestyle business rather than chasing growth for its own sake. The episode closes on his Gary Vaynerchuk influenced take on just getting started: You're better off trying something, failing, and fixing it than waiting until you're certain you'll succeed.