Last Wednesday, as reporters waited in Christie’s frigid auction room for the night’s record-breaking Impressionist and Modern Art sale to begin, they kept themselves occupied with a little game: Are you a Tobias person or a Christopher person?

If you haven’t been reading the slightly fervid coverage of the past week’s sales, you might wonder who these people are to inspire such a debate. They’re Tobias Meyer and Christopher Burge, the chief auctioneers at Sotheby’s and Christie’s, respectively. As unlike each other as, say, a John Currin painting is to a Constable, or a Gerhard Richter is to a Renoir, the two men each have their admirers. And both will be in action again this week, at the auction of postwar and contemporary art at Sotheby’s tonight and at Christie’s tomorrow night.

Mr. Meyer, who is also Sotheby’s worldwide head of contemporary art, is German, in his early 40s, and looks like a Helmut Lang model. He is more of a celebrity outside of the auction world than Mr. Burge, having been the subject of a New Yorker profile, which described, among other things, his “sculptural” head, his Savile Row suits, and the dramatically designed apartment he shares in the Time Warner building with his partner, the art adviser Mark Fletcher.

At the podium, Mr. Meyer is cool and unflappable, to the point of being inexpressive. “Tobias definitely has a certain star quality, and with that comes a certain inaccessibility,” an art consultant, Uta Scharf, said.

He “probably would not break a sweat in 120-degree weather,” a collector, who asked not to be named, joked.

Yet he’s undeniably glamorous, his German accent adding, as the dealer Mark Murray said,”a Bondian, international flavor to the auctions he takes.”

Mr. Burge, who is English and in his late 50s, has a more apparently casual, but no less powerful style. His appearance –– white hair, glasses –– is not as distinctive as Mr. Meyer’s, but is warm and friendly. He looks like your favorite uncle, if your favorite uncle were a British gentleman. When he leans over the podium to tease bidders, there is always a twinkle in his eye.

After last week’s sales, the art blogger Lee Rosenbaum called Mr. Burge a “master showman” and said that his “brisk pace and quick-witted repartee were in sharp contrast to the stolid, if solid, Impressionist/modern disposals at Sotheby’s the night before.”

Within the art world, Mr. Meyer is admired for his knowledge of and passion for contemporary art, while Mr. Burge is praised as a master auctioneer.

The publisher and collector Peter Brant, who described Mr. Meyer and Mr. Burge as “both very effective,” described Mr. Meyer as somewhat more of a connoisseur.

“He is very involved in the art on a daily basis,” Mr. Brant said. “In many cases, he’s been very much a part of getting the things that are in the sale, so you can see that closeness emotionally.”

Mr. Burge, by contrast, he described as “the quintessential auctioneer: he could sell horses, or he could sell art. He’s very savvy.”

That doesn’t mean, though, that Mr. Meyer isn’t a businessman. For some buyers, his slick demeanor actually brings the financial aspect more to the fore.

“I find that it’s a lot easier to buy from an English gentleman up there on the stand,” the dealer Maxwell Davidson IV said. “There’s an innocence to it almost.”With Mr. Meyer, he added, “it’s much more businesslike up there.”

Mr. Burge is charmingly down-toearth. He got into a semantic back-andforth with Christie’s president, Marc Porter, at the press conference after last week’s sale, when a reporter asked if the four Klimts being sold by Maria Altmann all went to individual buyers. Mr. Burge nodded. “Well, the buyers are anonymous, and anonymous buyers are usually individuals,” he said, looking to Mr. Porter to ask if that characterization was fair.

“Ah, I think our anonymous buyers would prefer to be identified as… anonymous,” Mr. Porter said.

Maybe it was Mr. Burge’s fatigue, but it almost looked like he was rolling his eyes.

Mr. Meyer’s and Mr. Burge’s pre-auction routines match their personalities. Before an evening sale, Mr. Meyer takes a nap, maybe drinks some tea.

Mr. Burge has a scotch.

To Ms. Scharf, who is consults with clients in New York and Berlin, the difference between the two men has its root in their nationalities. “The very Germanic, very correct way of doing things is definitely apparent in Tobias, whereas Christopher Burge is the English gentleman who doesn’t take himself too seriously,” she said. “He’s doing things correctly, obviously, but with this English humor. I think it’s very much the difference between being German and being British.”