Charles is a Senior Wine Specialist and Auctioneer at Zachys, and was both a commercial auctioneer and charity auctioneer at Christie's for close to a decade. He auctioneered hundreds of benefits including the Jackson Hole Wine Auction, Seth Rogen's Hilarity for Charity, Autism Speaks, Teach for China (Hong Kong), the Brady Center for the Prevention of Gun Violence, the Friends of Acadia auction, Camillus House, The Clinton Foundation, Family House SF, Pairings Nashville and auctions benefiting the Boston Symphony and the Nantucket Wine Festival. He was also a NY State licensed commercial auctioneer at Christie's, at the time of licensing the youngest at the firm, bringing down the gavel on thousands of lots, and tens of millions of dollars of wine, watches, Post War & Contemporary art, Asian art, and single-owner collections, such as the collections of Robert H. Ellsworth and Huguette Clark. He holds an MFA in fiction from NYU, a commercial pilot's license, and his essays and fiction have appeared in Food & Wine, the New York Times, the VQR and elsewhere.
CK Swett, a California native and Duke University graduate, began his career in the auction world in 2006, and has worked at Christie’s, Phillips and Heritage during the intervening thirteen years. In 2016, he founded Lot 1 with former Christie's colleague Charles Antin in order to better address the critical importance of not-for-profit fundraising.
CK's charity auctioneering efforts since 2010 have yielded nearly $100 million across more than 600 events that support everything from school children in Malawi and veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan to public schools in Manhattan and the American Cancer Society. Hailed by the New York Times as having "managed to shake up the staid world of auctioneering," CK set the world auction record for boxing memorabilia in February 2012, selling the gloves Muhammad Ali wore during his 1965 fight against Floyd Patterson for $1.1 million on behalf of the Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health.