Baltimore Fruit Exchange & The Auction Business

Shortly after Joseph DiGiorgio’s arrival in Baltimore, Maryland from New York after immigrating from Cefalu, Sicily in 1888, DiGiorgio used his $5,000 bank loan to establish the Baltimore Fruit Exchange in 1904 at the age of just 21 years old.(53) At that time, there were approximately seven other auctions for selling fruit in over ten other American cities.(54)

According to Joseph Arthur “J.A.” DiGiorgio, Joseph DiGiorgio Sr.’s nephew who worked full time for the DiGiorgio Fruit Corporation, prior to fruit auctions, “most produce had been shipped on consignment to jobbing houses, and sometimes they didn't get the best price.”(55) However, DiGiorgio Sr. appreciated that an auction sells items based on “its merits” as “most produce had been shipped on consignment to jobbing houses, and sometimes they didn't get the best price.”(56) In order to acquire fruit for the auctions, DiGiorgio Sr. traveled to California and Florida to “[arrange] for growers and shippers in those days to consign their fruit to the auction companies for sale rather than to the little jobbing places.”(57) DiGiorgio Sr. believed this was “the basic way of selling produce,” and it became the new normal for fruit distribution in the early Twentieth Century.(58)

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53. Grant, Elliot https://etgdesign.com/family/digiorgio/joseph

54. DiGiorgio, “The DiGiorgios”

55. DiGiorgio, “The DiGiorgios”

56. DiGiorgio, “The DiGiorgios”

57. DiGiorgio, “The DiGiorgios”

58. DiGiorgio, “The DiGiorgios”