RE: plant auction

["Messerly" <Ed_Messerlyiii@email.msn.com>]

Your welcome .... happy to be of assistance. I believe my helper said his
name was Gilliad (sp)[don't know his last name, might have had #168?]. He
really got a kick out of auctioning off those plants!! You might have some
serious competition next year ;-D
Sue

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-gsas-board@thekrib.com
[mailto:owner-gsas-board@thekrib.com]On Behalf Of Erik Olson
Sent: Wednesday, February 13, 2002 12:32 PM
To: gsas-board@thekrib.com
Subject: RE: plant auction


Kathy said she wanted to send the general thank-you message to the member
list and the website, but I'll pre-add my few words while she's at work.
When I look back at the last three years' plant auctions (this is what
makes having this list archived on the web so convenient), 2000 kinda
sucked because it was mostly just Dave and me up there hawking and never
even taking a breath for three hours; 2001 kinda sucked bacause of the
sasquatch incident, but this year it actually felt that even amongst the
34-second average auction time per lot, we got to have fun with the
audience again (though Steve's puns were sadly absent).

Numbers: We took in $1180.  $150 to splits, $375 to African Northwest, and
money for pizza and hospitality, means we netted about $600 for the
evening.  Last year we netted about $800, but part of this was due to
the Sasquatch incident, and we spend $100 of that to buy Anubias for
members the following month.  We took in a similar amount in 2000 as in
2001.

We had 34 bidders.  In 2001 we had 39 bidders.

We sold 259 lots.  Last year it was 231, and in 2000, 260.  What is a
little different is that in 2000 at least, it took us an extra hour to
sell all that stuff, wheras we sold all the items this year between 7:45
and 9:15.  That's one item every 34 seconds. :)


I think the auction went very well because:

* Set-up crew: Two or three people had e-mailed me in advance and came
early to help bag the plants.  Having everything pre-bagged made it a
simple grab-n-scan for the auctioneers.

* Having enough bags. Thanks Dave. :)

* I don't know how it happened, but the donations and splits were mostly
different species, so we got a great variety of stuff.  We need to thank
African Northwest big time, for cutting us the good deal, and for the
unusual SPECIMENS, i.e. Mother Anubias and the show swords... they're like
the rocks in the raked sand of a Japanese garden... they really inspire
people to bid & break up the action).

* Great dedication by the computer people, including Erika and Ed who
basically jumped in and started from zero.  You guys didn't miss a beat,
even when the program farted (I will try to look at that one in the next
month).

* I agree with Sam: One auctioneer per computer person.  They tracked each
other and always knew who to listen to or show the next item to.

* Three auctioneers the entire evening meant almost no logjams.  This
seems to be the perfect number -- two is just too hectic, but three is
perfact.  I think there were less than ten stalls in the entire auction,
and none were more than like 20 seconds.  (Yay Kathy for jumping in there
too!)

* Pre-agreement that we wouldn't do any multiple-item bids.  I know it's
tempting, especially when you have 25 bunches of frill, but I think
overall we went faster just doing them one by one, and saved much
headache.

* We need that paper-recorder.  (Victoria!  Thanks!)  The computer folks
and auctioneers don't always remember the last bid, we're moving so
quickly, so the recorder provides that all-important check.

* Great runners as always.  Steve, Sue, and the Rose kid (right?).

* I actually like that the prices were a bit lower, because it means
people are getting somewhat better deals.  For many years, it seemed like
the prices were ridiculous... part of the deal with the plant auction has
always been AVAILABILITY at good prices.

* Along those same lines, though, it was good that we didn't putter around
waiting for 50 cent increments or other crap.  I'm hoping I don't catch
too much flack from the membership for basically blowing off some bidders
who were slow getting their cards up, but I think it really kept us from
stalling out.

* Maybe $4 worth of disputed items.  Only minor complainin' from Sandy
(because I did not want to do the splits until later).  Yes, someday I
should modify the program to subtract off the splits right away, but
still...

* Hospitality.  Sandy brought all the sodas and cookies.


On the flip side, I think in the future we need to have certain things set
up in advance, like the late check-in/early check-out person.  We just
didn't have the people for this.  We had the extra computer, but never set
it up.  The one or two people who showed up late really did grind one
auctioneer to a halt while checking them in.  We lucked out because only
one person checked out early.

Likewise, if Ed and Erika had not volunteered to work the computers at the
last minute & Kathy hadn't decided to auctioneer, we would have been
majorly sunk.

  - Erik

--
Erik Olson
erik at thekrib dot com