Richard W. Bernstein, 82, leading auctioneer, property appraiser and real estate agent

“Anything can happen at an auction,” Richard W. Bronstein told Buffalo News reporter Phil Fairbanks. “We’ve had people get sick, we’ve had fires, we’ve been flooded out, but the sale always goes on.”

Even so, Western New York’s preeminent auctioneer hadn’t seen anything quite like that day in March 1992.

As he was getting ready to start bids on a group of vintage cars and trucks in a warehouse on Military Road, a customer told him there was a body in a compartment in a customized 1968 GMC van.

Most of the 400 to 500 people at the auction saw police rope off the van, but were unaware that a man had been found shot to death inside. The sale went on.

In more than 60 years as an auctioneer, Mr. Bronstein presided over thousands of sales for corporations, government entities, charities and private individuals.

He sold the Concrete Central grain elevator for the City of Buffalo. He auctioned the oldest stone house in Erie County – the Hull Family Home and Farmstead in Lancaster. He encouraged bids on the contents of the main office of Goldome, military items stolen by the High-Tech Gang in the 1980s, old seats from what was then Ralph Wilson Stadium, the services of stallions for the Arabian Horse Association of New York and the decorated bison statues from the Herd About Buffalo promotion in 2000.

In the 1980s and 1990s, he did tax foreclosure auctions for the cities of Buffalo and Niagara Falls and other municipalities. His auction of 1,300 properties for Erie County in 1995 took three days.

Auctioning the old Buffalo City Court building in 1984, he started by asking for a bid of $1 million. When no one responded, he began near the appraised price, $460,000, and coaxed potential buyers through 18 rounds of bidding, eventually getting to $1 million.

Also prominent as a property appraiser and real estate agent, he died July 6 in Erie County Medical Center after a brief illness. He was 82.

Born in Buffalo,…