Last night I went to bed after 3 am and got out of bed around 9 am. I figured I would get the rest of my sleep to make 8 hours total in the hot afternoon. It didn't work out that way.
Right off in the morning I worked on watering my garden again. The plants are responding nicely to the water, but with the near 100 degrees each day, sun, a good breeze, and the sandy loam soil I have, the ground dries real quick.
The raspberries are ripening rapidly. As I hadn't had breakfast yet I munched heartily as I started to pick them. Then I remembered Ziggy's hardware store was having their auction sale today. It already started at 10 am.I hadn't eaten breakfast yet so I grabbed a banana on the way out the door. I also hadn't shaved or taken my shower for the day. The day was not going as planned. But, there probably wasn't much at the auction, just shelves and stuff from their store closing.
I arrived at 11:30 am and the auction was going full bore with two auctioneers selling simultaneously. What was being sold was the merchandise that hadn't sold the store's final days before closing, in addition to the store's shelving units and display racks, etc.
The nails, bolts, and screws had been sold already. They had boxes and boxes of this stuff. Later I saw about 20 boxes in the back of one pickup. Would have been nice to get a box or two of nails.
Ziggy's still had nine various sink and bathtub faucets left. Good, as I hadn't gotten back to the store to buy some before they closed.
My uncles wouldn't have recognized me. I bid decisively and bought first choice at $25 each. They were listed at $65 to $70 retail. I bought a sink faucet and a bathtub faucet. I don't really care for my bathroom's sink faucet and how it works. If you had visited my place you know the bathtub needs a traditional faucet. When the bathtub faucet had failed, my father had patched together some pipes and handles he had laying around. It works, but doesn't really fit in with a bathroom decor.
When the remaining faucets were rebid, the winning bidder bought the remaining seven at $20 each.
I waited to bid on lag handles. They would be useful when installing gates. There were a little over 30 to be sold. The auction - to get through all the stuff quickly - often would sell choice of shelving rows. The lag handles were among chain link fence accessories which were on three shelving rows. To my surprise the auctioneers sold all rows in a single bid. I would have had to bid $25 to buy them. That was more than I wanted to pay. After the auctioneer moved on I asked the winning bidder, Don, if he would sell me the lag handles as he seemed interested in the fence accessories. Nope, he said he had plans on building a corral and would use them.
I have seen Don as many auctions. He is a "bottom feeder", a person who buys lots of different items if they go cheap enough. I wonder if he had a second hand store where he resells the stuff. Bo, the auctioneer, knew him and called him by name. That is how I know his name is Don.
I was interested in buying a hacksaw blade, but they sold choice of hangers and I didn't need over dozen blades, especially at the winning bid price.
In fact it could be hard to bid as you had to take multiples of the items. Good for the many contractors bidding on stuff, not so good for the average Joe. What am I going to do with a case of toilet seats? Or a box full of measuring tapes? Or dozens and dozens of door handles and locks?
When buying a box they went cheap enough by the box, but if you only needed one or two...
In the back were pallets and pallets of a mixture of various stuff shrink wrapped together. I was afraid they would sell the pallets "by the pallet", but they cut the shrink wrap and sold the various items separately, even though that took longer to do. It still didn't help me as the one box I was interested in sold for $65. It was a box of large heavy duty hinges and cane bolts. I could use them on gates, but not at that price.
The audience was mostly male, but there were some women attending. One woman, bidder 403, bought lots and lots of items if they went cheap enough. She out bid Don on a number of boxes or chain link fence accessories, for which I was happy. She created quite a large pile of various items she had bought. I had never seen her before, nor the guy she was with, so I think she was a contractor.
A couple of guys who were builders were not native English speakers. It sounded like they were from Eastern Europe. They caused a few problems with their poor English as they thought they were biding on a different item, or had bought a few items that were being sold "each piece" and not all together when they thought they were bidding on them all as one.
The auction was mostly held inside the store which was a blessing as it was sunny and 98 degrees outside. There were some items outside in t he sun, and some items in the back warehouses. I had my eye on some chain link fence gates. Notice the word "gates".
While waiting for the 'gates' I bid on some tools but dropped out. They had a lawnmower that looked fairly dirty. They didn't start it. I think the winning bid was $20 or $30 - I am not sure as two auctioneers were selling somewhat close to one another at the time, and with the building echo it made it hard to hear at times. The winning bid could have been $120 or $130. So I didn't bid.
The gates were in about ten piles based on size. I thought they would sell choice of piles. No, they sold the gates "each" with the winning bidder getting to choose the ones he wanted. Don won the bid at $12.50 each. Initially he planned on buying all thirty gates. Then he decided to buy all but the smallest gates. That left two piles of 4 gates each. Perfect as I wanted four or less gates and these smaller ones would work. But they put all 8 in one pile and sold the pile at one price. I didn't want eight and before I could change my mind they all sold for $30. That certainly was cheap enough. I still haven't decided if I should have bought the gates, or if I was better off not buying them.
And with that I paid for my faucets and left. It was after 5 pm and I still hadn't eaten yet for the day.
A crazy life I lead.
In this photo, Bo is in blue. His daughter (? - she seems too pretty to be his daughter) is the young woman in the right foreground writing up the winning bids. Don, the "bottom feeder", is left of center in the reddish shirt and holding the water bottle. Bidder 403 is the woman in green on the left side of the photo.
The guy in the hat and green shirt with the long beard was with a woman pushing their young child in a baby stroller. She had a low cut shirt and a tattoo of an abstract design coming out of her cleavage and above both her breasts. You couldn't help but notice the tattoo. I'm not sure I cared for the tattoo as it was too distracting. I didn't get a photo of the tattoo.
It was about 98 degrees when this photo was taken.
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