The Event ~ The Auction

For the last twenty years Tim has stepped gently into the auction ring as head auctioneer.   He has been dabbling in the business, doing charity auctions, church fund raiser auctions, and personal property and estate auctions for others.  He runs his business "Tim Stricker Auctions and Appraisals" as a supplement to his real estate business and haying operations.   He's never really  promoted it through advertising, just word of mouth.  People like the way he does business.  We usually do about a dozen auctions a year,  sometimes more, sometimes less.

I do all the ad set up, cashiering, and follow up paperwork.  It's like a second part-time job.  Auctions are fun.  One can easily get caught up in the flow and excitement of an auction and buy really, really nice "stuff" at an auction for a dime on the dollar ~ stuff you need and stuff you don't need.  I have brought home some real treasures myself. 

Sometimes we get really, really tired of selling toasters ~ meaning the same old things that everybody already has.  But people just keep buying more and more stuff at auctions, probably because it's such a great bargain.   Many of our auction customers buy to resell on the popular ebay.  Ebay has really kept the acution business healthy, even through the depressed economy.  If it wasn't for ebay, some of this junk wouldn't sell, but ebayers buy it to resell to someone else in another part of the country.  Like the saying goes, "One person's junk is another person's treasure!"  By the way, we don't use the word junk when talking about our auctions.  It's merchandise!

We had an auction over the weekend on Saturday.  It was the average auction with about 100 registered buyers, except that we had "treasures" from five different clients.  We have had huge auctions in the past with up to 300 buyers, and some piddly little ones.  But that is the auction business.  We never know what the day will bring. 

One of our most memorable auctions is one we did a few years ago ~ It was all  1950's era merchandise.  A couple that lived and furnished their house by the 1950's sold their entire collection.  It was such an upscale event that we held it at the Civic Center, and the crew dressed in black dress pants and white shirts and the guys wore ties.  We even dressed the tables with white linens that the "merchandise" was displayed on.

A more recent memorable auction was one we did in October 2010.  The lady abandoned a huge house literally filled to the  brim with very nice furniture, artwork and "stuff".  She was one of those compulsive buyers, because half the stuff was still new in boxes. It took the moving crew five days to move it all to the auction site.  She had an entire basement room filled to the ceiling with Christmas and holiday decor.   Three 8' tables were filled with crystal and glass still in their boxes.  It looked like a department store!   The people came out of the woodwork for that event! 

Tim has a real talent for the auction chant ~ a skill that came easily to him, chanting the time away in tractors moving up and down the fields through his many years of farming.   He has received many nice compliments over the years.  That's why people keep coming to him to do their auctions.  But we are glad that he's not made it a full-time business or that he doesn't keep too busy at it.  It's a nice little hobby that supplements the budget.   But I certainly wouldn't want to fill every weekend of my time doing this! Currently we have three more scheduled within the next two months.

We have a nice dependable crew that has just as much fun at the auctions as we do.  Auctions are a social event, they draw alot of people.  It's amazing people just keep buying the same stuff over and over and over.  Yes, auctions are an eventful time that is sometimes hard to understand!  Just another eventful chapter in our life.