Auction Action part 2

So I have been out of the loop a few days, down with a cold. Today we’ll finish up the story about the auction last week.

There were over 200 registered bidders at the auction. The auction began promptly at 10am, with the items that were on display in the back of the house. In the backyard, there were a lot of garage-oriented things, some construction materials, and livestock equipment. Promptly, the temperature dropped and the winds kicked up. After watching the action and getting an idea of how long it would be before the action returned to the front of the house, we decided to go home for an hour or two and get out of the cold. Before we left, we saw a Craftsman tool chest sell for $600, contents included.

An hour later, Mary and I returned without Mom, and the auction was at the front of the house. As the crowd assembled, it was easy to get out of the wind. The “ring men” gathered at the trailer, where the iron pots and pans shown in a previous photo had been arranged. Other significant items on this table were about 30 crocks of various types, sizes, and vintages, 20 or so baskets, and a few other collectable types of items. In short, I expected that there would be a lot of action on these things.

There were three Luray/Page County memorabilia items that we found of interest and had planned to bid for – one was an aerial photo of the old tannery works in Luray; we want to collect a few of these kinds of historical items to display in the cabin. There was a framed set of memorabilia from the Stanley Garage – a photo, one of those old-timey fans people used in church back in the day, and a little calendar. The other was an item we first saw in the Hawksbill Diner – a poster that was distributed when the Hawksbill Pool in Stanley first opened – and we had seen that there were two copies of this in two separate lots in the auction.

This poster features black and white photos of the pool and the dance hall that was built as part of the Hawksbill Pines development, where our cabin is. At the bottom of the poster, there is an ad for quarter-acre cottage lots – which is how our development was started. This was our primary target in the auction, but not having a good idea of its value, Mary and I set a bidding strategy of $25 for the item when it came up.

So the collectables starting going up for bid. The first basket was a large, rectangle shaped one…I was stunned when it sold for $400. The auctioneer said to the winner, “Let’s hope you don’t need a new set of tires this week!” Next, a crock – “that’s an old one” – sold for $300. On it went – baskets in the “multi-Franklin” range, and crocks, too.

The aerial photo came up for bid – there was interest with about five bidders – it went for $70. Then the poster we wanted – about a dozen bidders, we went in twice but the bidding quickly passed $25. We were out of the game, and the hammer was $65 for this item. One last thing, as the auctioneer passed over Mary for another chance when the bidding hit $40, he said, “Where are you going to get another one?” But we had a fallback plan, since we knew there was one coming up later.

As you can see, we were learning quite a bit about our neighbors and how this kind of thing works. After about 30 items were sold from this trailer, there was a guy with about $1500 worth of crocks at his feet, and a woman with about $1200 in baskets. The aerial photo and Hawksbill Pool poster had gone to the same person as well. So, collectors were there in force, and with them bidding against each other, things could get “pricey” in my opinion – probably not in theirs.

Finally the trailer was cleared of items and we moved to the next area, where our poster was among the lots. This trailer featured 50 or so green depression glass items, another 50 pink depression glass items, other china, some vintage military photos (interesting stuff – V-2 test photos, and atomic tests at Bikini Atoll!), three or four old accounting ledgers, and our poster.

The two items I can remember well enough to highlight: Two of the accounting ledgers were sold as a lot; the entries in them were dated in the 1830’s. I hadn’t looked carefully enough to know what the business was. This lot sold for more than $300. The other item was a little matched salt and pepper in pink depression glass; it included a glass caddy. When the hammer fell at $250 – there were as many as 10 people bidding on this item all the way to $200, I was stunned.

Then, finally the ring man picked up a little child’s story book, pretty old. No bids at $5; dropped the price to $3, no bids; dropped the price to $1…no bids. There is another little trick of the trade that had been going on from time to time during this auction when an item generated no interest…the auctioneer would say, “Okay, let’s spice it up” and the ring man would combine another lot with it.

To our surprise, the story book was “spiced up” with our poster. Interest quickly swelled, but this time we knew what to expect. The poster was in much better shape than the previous one, and it included actual photo prints rather than lithographed ones. We figured it would go for more than the $65 we’d seen the previous one go for. Mary did the bidding and stood her ground thanks to her New Jersey heritage. The hammer fell at $100, which was more than we had expected to pay at the beginning of the day but we had learned an awful lot during the process.

Because of the cold, we took off right afterwards and went home to warm up. Here are a couple of final phone cam shots of the loot.

I’m keeping an eye on Mike’s website. This seems like a fun outing to do from time to time out there on the weekends.