Hodgson auction

Last Saturday I attended a ranch auction nearby.  A guy was selling his horse ranch and stuff.  He had enough stuff for two days of selling, though I only attended the first day with the tools and ranch stuff.  The guns and other collectibles I didn't care about.

The auction started early at 9 am, though, as usual, I showed up an hour after the start.

Even though the auction had been well advertised, there weren't as many people as I expected.  That was good as the selling prices were reasonable.  And there were some items I wanted.

First and foremost on my wish list was a 16 ft gate as I really wanted one more gate in this size.  One was at the auction.  First they sold a 12 ft gate, and as the price was reasonable at $45, I bought that gate.  I almost bought the 16 ft gate for $65.  The alternate auctioneer was on a phone with a phone-buyer and before the main auctioneer could say "Sold", the alternate auctioneer indicated his buyer wanted to bid.  I ended up buying the gate for $75 as the phone bidder quit after bidding once.

There were over a dozen partial rolls of new barb wire.   I guess the owner never wanted to splice two strands of barb wire together and would buy another roll for another project.  First they sold five rolls of used barb wire.

See the rolls of used barb wire behind the woman?  Those rolls, and the ones on top of the fence posts ahead of her, I bought for $5.  I don't need any more barb wire but no one else would bid.  They had too many partial rolls of new barb wire left to sell and that was what the buyers wanted.  Even then I bought five partial rolls of new barb wire when no one else would bid.  These were small rolls, but worth $5.

They also had railroad ties for sale.  They had a large pile of long ties and some very large diameter posts.  Some of the ties were longer than any I've ever seen.  These ties were under my "nice to have but not really needed" category.  Therefore I dropped out when I had to bid $60.  A person then behind me bid $60 and got the ties.  This then became one of my "I shoulda bid more.." feelings.

The auction did have at the very end of the last row a pile of three 8.5 ft good used railroad ties, a good very large diameter post, and a very large diameter post that was not so good as it was split lengthways into two unequal sized pieces.  A bonus was that two of the ties had a pair of lags bolts for gates in each of them.

The guy who outbid me for the large pile of ties was around as the auctioneer moved closer to the small pie of ties.  And I had seen him looking over this small pile.   Dang.  I am going to have bid against him.  But as fortune would have it , someone distracted him a few items before the tie pile.  Even though he was nearby, he didn't bid against me and I bought the small pile of ties for only $5.  The buy of the day for me.  Especially as the lag bolts alone were worth more than $5.

The auction had three used round metal feeders.  The winning bid was only $110.  Man, of all the auctions I have attended, no feeders have sold for under $150.  I had bought a used round metal feeder this Spring before Tammy and I drove to Washington State to visit my relatives. So I didn't really need another one. The winning bidder only bought one feeder, the undamaged one. Bidder number two foolishly decided to take a second feeder at the same price.  If she had elected to open up the bidding again I am sure she could have gotten it cheaper.

The auctioneer did open the bidding up for the third bidder and the only bid was for $50.  I debated bidding $60 for two reasons.  Reason 1 was that it was very cheap.  Reason two was that the bidder was a competitor who once outbid me for a group of stuff at another auction.  The one item I wanted had no relation to the rest of the stuff; the auctioneer just grouped a bunch of stuff to move the auction along. I tried to buy the one item I wanted from this guy and he refused to sell it to me.  I've held a grudge ever since. 

But I didn't bid on the third feeder and the competitor bought it for $50.

The only other items of great interest to me were buckets of bolts - including lag bolts for gates - and third small pails of staple nails used for barb wire fencing.  However these items sold for plenty as it was 'buyers choice'.  Again and again the auctioneer auctioned the remaining buckets and pails.  The bucket with the lag bolts and other bolts I had an interest in were taken but the pails of staples remained.  However the owner wanted to speed things along and told the auctioneer to sell all the rest of the buckets and pails in one group.  Again it was a case of I only wanted one thing, but the price for everything was too much.


They tried to sell three horses. Even though they were registered horses, only two of the three horses sold.  One horse was 11 years old, another was 18 years old.  I don't know the age of the third horse. While they claimed to not have to reserve, the minimum bid was $200.  One horse, the 11 year old, (shown below) sold for $275.  I am not sure about the other as I was talking with a guy and not listening closely.

They tried to auction the ranch and buildings but there was no one interested.  The ranch was 42 acres with nice buildings.