The secret is out: your friendly local second-hand store probably buys its shabby-chic furniture from house-clearance sales. Rosita Boland reports on cutting out the middleman

You could feel rich in Herman Wilkinson Auction Rooms, in Rathmines in Dublin. You could walk in on a Thursday with a handful of euro and walk out the owner of a table and chairs, sofa, sideboard, box of books or stack of plates. For decades the company has held a weekly house-clearance auction, with up to 400 lots on offer. The tradition is, happily, still thriving.

It's just after 10 a.m. one Thursday morning, and a small front room of the auction house is already almost full. Many of the people are sitting on the items for sale, including several chairs in the centre of the room.

The weekly auction works like this. Items go on show on Wednesdays afternoons, from 2 p.m. to 6.30 p.m. The auction starts at 10 a.m. on Thursday and goes through until lunchtime.

The lots are sourced from house clearances, executors' sales, people upgrading their furniture and getting rid of old clutter, pub and hotel liquidations and people emigrating or moving house. Unwanted wedding gifts also come up for sale.

The auctioneers go to houses to select what they think will sell. Unsold lots get tried for a second week; then, if nobody wants them, they are dumped.

The room is crammed, and everything in it is for sale. Dispose of any preconceptions that auction goods are all expensive and that if you inadvertently raise your hand to scratch your head you'll find yourself forking out hundreds of euro. Many bids here start at €2 or €5 and go up €2, €5 or €10 increments, making it one of the few places to put the gain back into bargain.

Ray Wilkinson is standing on a chair to auction the lots, alongside clerk Stephen McGarry, perched on an umpire-style stool, and head porter Ben Simpson. Wilkinson takes and closes bids, McGarry writes down the prices fetched and Simpson moves round the room, indicating which lot is under offer. As some 100 items are for sale in this room alone, Wilkinson moves the bidding along at a pace.

A Chinese-style rug sells for €5. Boxes of books go for €2. Six beautiful oak and cane-backed dining chairs go for €45. A Victorian rosewood writing box goes for €14. A box of china ornaments make €2. A white rocking chair sells for a relatively pricey €42. A box of garden tools makes €10. Two enormous hotel-style gilt-framed mirrors attract the most bids, fetching €250 and €200 apiece. Three radio cassette recorders fetch €2. Four lovely oak kitchen chairs are offered for €5, then knocked down for €2 the lot. A Dimplex heater goes for €5. A bow-fronted sideboard, eight-seater oval table and six chairs go for €55 the lot: they are not great quality, but if you'd just bought a house, were strapped for money and needed to kit out your dining room cheaply, where could you do better?

My favourite pieces, a terrific Scandinavian-style 1950s chest of drawers with a Formica top, initially doesn't even raise a €2 bid; eventually it fetches €10. A folding card table goes for €4, a pretty and unusual arts-and-crafts cabinet fetches €20 and a charming old pine hall table with brass-handled drawers in perfect condition makes €32. Very little doesn't sell. An antique Hoover and dust set are offered for €2 but don't budge. Neither do two pairs of antique painted wooden skis, also for €2. Or a huge sideboard for €5. Too big, says Wilkinson.

There is surprisingly little wouldn't-touch-it-with-a-bargepole stuff; there are a few tatty Lloyd Loom stools and chairs, hideous cheap tables, vile prints and hulking sideboards that could double as postmodern Titanics. It's a truism: one man's junk is another man's treasure. But if you found this range and standard of furniture and bric-a-brac in a second-hand shop - and at these prices - you'd go into ecstasies of delight.

In the back room are hundreds more lots, among them a piano, a spin dryer, several sofas and suites, china, lamps, wardrobes, pictures and assorted boxes of bric-a-brac. David Herman does the auctioning here, with impressive briskness and a quick line in patter: one lot, a hip flask and jewelled cross, get offered with the line: "If there isn't enough spirit left in the flask, you'll find it in the cross."

One bidder, John Kelly, comes regularly to buy boxes of books. First he says how great the auction is, then he looks dismayed. "Oh, don't be telling people about this place!" he pleads. Kelly is not the only one anxious to keep the auction low key. Herman says half the regulars are dealers, owners of second-hand shops or car-boot specialists, who sell the stuff on. Without even trying I recognise the owner of a south-side second-hand shop I regularly frequent. Now I know where all his "bargains" come from.

Several of those here to buy professionally look unhappily at my notebook and glower at the photographer. One dealer comes up to say I shouldn't be on the premises. He isn't a bit happy to hear that the owners know I am here. The implication, of course, is that publicity could up the attendances and the size of the bids, even if temporarily. But in what's perceived to be rip-off Ireland, it's impossible not to want to champion the case of ordinary people in search of a bargain.

Herman would love to see more young people at the auctions. He believes a generation of people feel unnecessarily intimidated by auctions. And you don't even have to be there yourself to bid. You can go to the Wednesday viewing and ask one of the staff to bid up to an agreed price for you: it is, after all, in their interest to sell everything. What always sells? "Almost everything, but not big furniture. Sideboards, big wardrobes. People don't have the space. We've stopped accepting a lot of those big pieces now."

Buckley Galleries of Sandycove also holds weekly furniture auctions; it usually offers about 500 lots, a third of which will be antiques. "We call it a chattel auction," says Michael Buckley. He agrees with David Herman about what is popular. "We were able to sell almost anything until about two years ago, but now we can't sell big upholstered furniture, sideboards and three-piece suites. People don't have enough room for them. And what used to happen was that the rising generation would buy the last generation's furniture when they were upgrading, but that doesn't happen any more. There is a huge amount of 1970s dining-room and living-room furniture out there that nobody wants now."

Of course, that might also have something to do with its coming from the decade that taste bypassed.

STARTING OUT:

Herman Wilkinson Auction Rooms

Rathmines, Dublin, 01-4972245

Furniture auction: viewings each Wednesday from 2 p.m. until 6.30 p.m.; auctions each Thursday at 10 a.m. Also auctions antiques every six weeks

Buckley Galleries

Sandycove, Dublin, 01-2805408

Furniture and antique auction: viewings each Wednesday from 9.30 a.m. until 5.30 p.m.; auctions each Thursday at 2.30 p.m.