Anita Manning

Manning's father used to take her to auctions on Sauchiehall Street, in Glasgow and she grew to love antiques. She first got into the antiques business in the 1970s after buying a bed from an Irish dealer. He offered her a job as a buyer.

After studying physical education and specialising in dance at Aberdeen and Edinburgh, Manning was a teacher before she got married and had children. As a young mother, she developed a knowledge of antiques by buying furniture from auctions. After her first visit to Glasgow as a buyer, she bought and sold furniture in England and Ireland for about three years, driving all around the country in a truck.[2]

Along with her daughter Lala, Manning has run the Glasgow auction house Great Western Auctions since 1989.[3] Manning's son lives in Hong Kong, while her mother lived in Australia for the last 35 years of her life.[1] The Sunday Post says she is Scotland's first female auctioneer.[1][4]

In 2016 Manning set a new record for the largest profit on a single item on the Antiques Road Trip. A Buddha statue she had purchased for £50 sold for £3,800, a 7,500% profit.[5] This record was broken in September 2017 when Paul Laidlaw bought a Chambre Automatique De Bertsch sub-miniature camera for £60 and sold it at auction for £20,000.[6]