New Hamburg auction house at the centre of new tv show on Rogers

Miller & Miller Auctions co-owner Justin Miller and Ballinran Entertainment executive producer Craig Thompson are pictured recently at the New Hamburg auction house as a crew from Ballinran sets up for a live-auction broadcast. Photo by Galen Simmons

By Galen Simmons, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Miller & Miller Auctions, a New Hamburg-based auction house renowned for selling some of Canada’s most valuable and intriguing collectibles worldwide, made its television debut on Rogers TV earlier this month in a new series, Auction Studio: The Best of Miller & Miller Auctions.

The series, which premiered on Rogers TV April 5 and is available to viewers across the country and around the world via Rogers’ website and YouTube channel, captures the excitement, drama and storytelling behind Canada's most remarkable collections. This television show is the direct result of a partnership between the New Hamburg auction house and Stratford production company Ballinran Entertainment forged at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

“Before we met Craig (Thompson, executive producer at Ballinran Entertainment), we were doing online sales; they were always in tandem with a live event at that time,” said Justin Miller, who co-owns Miller & Miller Auctions with his brother Ethan Miller. “Before COVID, we had a live audience here and we also broadcast the auction online, but at that time, we were just using a webcam, basically, that just showed the auctioneer, no additional footage or anything.

“When COVID hit, our sales obviously went online only, to the point where we didn’t have a live audience at all. So, we felt the need to up our online media game in the sense of having better footage, better video – we started using switchers so we could switch over to live footage of the item rotating on a platform with somebody nearby. That’s where Ballinran came in … and we’ve seen, since then, our clients demand that level of detail and people sort of treating the auction as a live event they can tune into (from wherever they are) without losing interest.”

The Miller brothers and the team at Ballinran quickly discovered a large portion of their audience was tuning in to these live, online auctions for the full, six-hour broadcast from start to finish. With all that footage from each broadcast and a very clear appetite from online audiences for content focused on the unique and rare items that go up for auction at Miller & Miller, as well as the drama of the auction, the Miller brothers and Thompson saw potential for an hour-long television show.

“The items that we sell all have stories behind them and they’re interesting pieces,” Justin Miller said. “If I have a conversation with people who aren’t familiar with our business, it’s not hard to talk about any of them at length. That’s the reason why people spend good money on these items because they are historically significant and worth talking about. Craig certainly noticed these items are interesting and people are going to want to hear about them, so why not make this into a production where even people who aren’t participating in the sale can watch it and enjoy, in this case, learning about Canadian history?”

Justin Miller said the show should interest those who tune in to other shows like Canadian Pickers, Pawn Stars and even Antiques Roadshow, with the added drama and suspense of a live auction and the bonus that many of the items featured are connected in some way to Canadian history and culture.

Items sold at auction by Miller & Miller come from high-value collections within niche collector market segments such as Canadiana, folk art, Petroliana, breweriana, pop culture, sports memorabilia, luxury watches and rare antiques. The local auction house holds the world record for a Maud Lewis painting after selling “Black Truck” by the famous Canadian folk artist for $350,000 – a painting that had once been traded for a few grilled-cheese lunches. The story generated international media attention.

“Unlike a lot of other auction companies, Miller & Miller specializes in high-value collectibles and everything they sell is art to somebody,” Thompson said. “It has value; it’s not like grandma’s teacups. It’s something that means something to our history.

“ … The show is kind of a pilot right now and we’re calling it ‘The Best of Miller & Miller Auctions’ because we’re taking the most amazing parts of each sale, the most drama, the highest value, the greatest stories, and packaging them into a one-hour episode. So, we’re taking six hours of footage and finding the best moments that capture a general audience’s attention. … Our goal is to whet the public’s appetite because we really believe there’s a lot of stories that aren’t told that could have value for expanding the series.”

Auction Studio: The Best of Miller & Miller Auctions airs Saturdays at 3 p.m. with repeat broadcasts on Sundays at 8 p.m., Tuesdays at 4 p.m. and Thursdays at 7 a.m., reaching over a quarter of a million viewers in the Waterloo Region alone and many more on YouTube.