Remembering Duane Grafe, Our Founder

It is with heavy hearts that we share the passing of Duane Grafe, the founder of Grafe Auction Company. Everything this company is, it owes to him.

Duane graduated from the Reisch American School of Auctioneering in Mason City, Iowa, in December 1959, and that same year he started the company with little more than hard work, a sharp eye, and a handshake he intended to keep. He learned the trade under Colonel Joe Reisch, a tough, demanding perfectionist who trained auctioneers the world over, and he never lost that edge. There was no playbook for what he was trying to do and no guarantee it would work. What he had was a conviction that businesses needed a better way to sell their equipment, and the willingness to bet on himself before anyone else would.

He spent the rest of his career a step ahead of the trade. He pioneered business liquidations in the Rochester area when the idea was still unfamiliar, and he was among the first anywhere to bring the auction method to grocery and supermarket closings. That work, once a novelty, is now one of the things Grafe is known for across the country. The standards he set in those early years are still the ones much of the industry works from.

He earned the big accounts the hard way. When Walmart first gave him a chance, they made him buy that first deal outright and then followed him from auction to auction with a clipboard, "keeping score," as Duane always told it. He passed their test. They made him their agent after that, and the bigger names that followed, Target among them, came on the strength of what he proved that first time. He never forgot that the work had to be earned, every time, and he never let the rest of us forget it either.

From a single handshake in 1959, the company he started now reaches buyers in every state in the country, runs hundreds of auctions a year, and carries the trust of some of the largest companies in America. He lived to see his name become a standard, and in 2005 the Minnesota State Auctioneers Association inducted him into its Hall of Fame, the same honor his son Judd would earn years later.

The company is still in the family's hands, led today by Judd and by Duane's grandson, Ben Grafe, our Director of Operations. Three generations in, the work is still done the way he taught it.

What he built became far more than a business. It became a family, and a standard the rest of us still measure ourselves against. Sarah Grafe, his trusted cashier and clerk, was by his side through all of it, at the table auction after auction, keeping the numbers straight while he ran the block. The expertise, the integrity, the willingness to try what no one else had tried, all of it started with him.

Everyone at Grafe Auction Company owes him a debt we can only repay by carrying his work forward with the same integrity he showed every day. Our deepest condolences go to his family, who shared him with all of us.

If Duane was part of your story, whether you worked alongside him, bought from him, or learned from him, we would be grateful to hear from you. Share your memories with us at info@grafeauction.com and we will make sure they reach his family.

Rest easy, Duane.