My First Auction House

My First Auction House

I officially started this year, 2014.  But if you remember, New Years Day fell on Thursday, and I had an opportunity to go to an auction house, Junktiques Auctions in Lakeland, that Monday night, December 29th.  Now I wasn't quite sure what to expect, but figured I didn't have much else to do.  There were plenty of pictures online of what they were selling but I wasn't sure how they would go about selling it?  There were several items in the pictures that caught my fancy, so I decided to go.  Baseball cards and other collectibles, primarily.  I do wish I had thought to save the pictures of the items I liked.

It started at 6:00 PM with viewing at 5.  I got there early enough to register and browse the items up for auction.  I saw most of the items I liked and was willing to stick around at see if I could get them.

The auction started out back for individual furniture pieces.  Two chairs caught my eye in the photo's, but I decided not to bid, but the pair only went for $12.  The furniture was auctioned off one piece, or matching pieces, at a time.

After all the furniture was all bid on, the auction moved to the front room.  The front room was filled with over 20 tables, each piled with various items, and not necessarily items that were similar in nature.

I am not sure at this point how this auction will take place.  Will they auction each individual item off?

As it turns out, their way of auctioning was fun.  Everyone would gather around a table and the highest bidder would get their choice off the table.  Second highest would get next choice and so on, until a bidder refused.  Then a new auction at the same table would commence, usually for less, and highest bidder would choose.  Once the bid was under 4 or 5 dollars, they would start again, and it would be a 2 for.  In other words, if your high bid was $8 (this was probably the average), you would pay $16 and choose two things.  Once the bids got to about $3, they would start again with a 3 for.  High bid of $5, pays $15 and chooses three items.

At this point there is much less on the table, so they will group what's left into several piles and high bid takes a pile.  Usually an interesting, eclectic, and unique assortment of goods.  I did pick up one pile at the end of the night for me, for only $2 and it was a very varying assortment, but easily worth at least 10x what I paid.

My goal that evening were the several different boxes of baseball and basketball cards.  I ended up with about half the boxes I went to get.  One of the most rewarding items was a tote full of Christmas items for $8.  It was full and worth at least $40.  Many decorations and half still with tags.

I wound up spending $46 (there about) and coming home with a car full of items I was lucky to fit in the car.

Any items I am reselling on eBay or in my store will have the code AH14001 where AH stands for Auction House.

Look for me to post any extreme, high selling, examples of what you can find, as well as a final recap in value, once everything from this lot is gone.

Until the next post, Happy Hunting and I am here for EZHelp4U!!!