> Nixon as auctioneer. We had wide range of items to auction, and the crowd
> was frisky even without any available free beer. The total came to $1660 for
> the auction. The donated 46 gallon bow front aquarium and stand went for
> $290(!), and I was gratified to see that the copy of Scott Mettee et al.'s
> book "The Fishes oF Alabama..." went for $55 and the Handbook of Darters
> package went for $65 (if I remember correctly...).
That's pretty outstanding auction results, Bruce! So it would seem that your decision to not
hold a raffle this year was a good one.
My suggestion for future conventions is this: Every year we have had the auction at night, after
a full day's activity. That would seem to make sense, because that is the most convenient
time. But the problem is, everybody is tired, etc., and at the tail end of a two hour auction
everybody just wants it to be over so they can relax and chat. So the bids are maybe not as
high as they could be if we held the auction in the afternoon, with a good break somewhere
along the way. Friday is frequently the most heavily attended day, so it might make sense to
hold the auction Friday afternoon? Despite all that, I think things went rather well, with most
items selling for near or higher than fair market value. It also seems that offering the items up
on a random or semi-random basis (pretty much the way Phil and Jeff did) instead of grouping
them by type of merchandise helps to keep interest up.
Prost,
Martin
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