The “Hotel des Chevau-Légers” auction rooms in Versailles are a theatre where the major and minor tragedies and comedies of life are played out. Following a few key characters in these dramas, professional buyers, private collectors, auctioneers, the very rich and moderately poor, the film shows that the auction room is a mirror: the reflection, caught at a moment of happiness or desolation, of lives criss-crossing with the risk of being shattered, livelihoods ending up under the hammer. The film observes the fate reserved for mundane and costly objects, the definitive symbols of life passing on, of the wheel of chance turning.