Auction

One of my EBay items

Les has been saving pennies for as long as I've known him.  He saves all pennies, but gets especially excited when he finds a wheat penny or an indian head penny.

In the last couple of months, he has gone through all of his pennies.  He sorted them out by decade and style.  And has saved everything prior to 1982.  He now has them in various jars around the house.  Everything after 1982 we brought back to the bank on Friday afternoon.  (They just loved to see us with all of those pennies on a Friday afternoon.)

Another EBay item.

We split them up into 7 different easier to carry -- but still very heavy -- boxes.  As the teller fed them into her machine for counting, I asked Les how many he thought we had.  I think he was joking when he said $15.  I guessed $157.

It took about 1/2 hour for the teller to count all of our pennies.  And she picked out probably $2 worth because they were all scummy and gummy and she said they might jam up her machine.  Final total -- $154.95.  I guess I won that bet.

So, being $150 richer, we went to an action in Raton yesterday morning.  I figured we would be there for a couple of hours or so.  They had everything there.  Dump trucks, horse trailers, kitchen gadgets, shop stuff, Bobcats, coins, cars, ranch gates, tractors, gloves, trailers, indian rugs, jewelry.... you name it... they had it.

I first bid on a package of really nice work gloves for Les.  I won that bid.  We watched as the auctioneer and the crowd went up and down the aisles auctioning off everything... and some things twice.  We were interested in the coins, and there were a few rustic tidbits that I was interested in.  I pointed out this parts bin cabinet to Les.  At first he didn't want it, but the more he looked at it, the more excited he was about it.  We tried all 15 of the drawers.  All worked.  The whole piece was about 3' x 18" x 24" deep.  It appeared to be 1930's vintage, but I could be way off on that.  I'm only guessing based upon the items that were still left in the drawers.  He found in one of the drawers a record player stylus that played 78's.  Haven't seen a 78 in ages.

Finally, after several hours, the crowd came slowly around to all of the tools and then the parts bin.  Les, for the first time ever, bid on the item and he won the bid at $25.  He was so happy.  Then after another 1/2 hour or so they got around to the rustic tidbit trailer.  By that time you could tell the auctioneer was really tired because he seemed to be rushing the bids.  I wanted to bid on the indian rug, but before I knew it, another woman won that bid for $25.  Couldn't believe it.  They had Navajo pottery (which I love) and I bid on two of those, but didn't win.  It's hard to justify spending $30 on a gorgeous piece of art when you're trying to save for a house.  Oh well.

Les's squashed parts bin.

I won minor bids on some things that I thought I would EBay.  I think I paid $5 for them.  But as we were watching, suddenly I looked to my right and saw a forklift drive over Les's parts bin.  There were probably 2,000 items in that auction.  There was stuff all over the place.  And the one thing that gets destroyed was Les's.  Les walked over to the driver with his arms outstretched and I can only imagine his mouth open.  Of all the luck!

We won some of the coins, and a really cute towel bar with bears that will go into the new house.  We won 2 rusty, old looking coat hooks and a ring of old jail keys -- also to go into the new house.   I paid about $100 for all of it. 

We came home hours later with sunburn and sore feet; some nick-nacks and no parts bin.  But still had a really good time.