Shamrocks and Auctions

Actually, there weren't any shamrocks but if you go to an auction on St. Patrick's Day, as my sister, my mom and I did last Saturday, you know you're going to want to bid on the green chandelier, right?

Okay, I didn't bid but in the right setting, that lamp might look mighty fine.  The woman that bought it paid $165 for the privilege of owning it, can you imagine?

The auction itself was held in an interesting place, a building that used to be a barn. Check out the size of the logs holding up the ceiling above us!

Here's a closer look.

There were two rooms full of things to be auctioned off and two auctioneers selling items simultaneously, which meant we spent some time going back and forth between rooms to be sure we didn't miss out the items we were interested in.

The first thing I bought was this box of miscellaneous religious items for a mere $4.00.

I wanted this little book that looks like it has a mother of pearl cover.

Check out the groovy inside cover (the contents of the book appear to be written in Polish).

Then I bought two books for $2 a piece, one of which was entitled "Shooting with Guns" - I gave that one away to the woman behind us who bid on 2 similar books right after my purchase, and kept the 1929 volume about a girl named Jeanne in France (more on that later, I took it to work to copy some of the pages).

Then I bought a box of pretty little bottles with glass stopper lids.  They look like they came from a chemical lab of some sort. Some of them have unusual looking liquids inside, not sure how I'll dispose of those!

I missed out on this intriguing Niagara Falls lamp:

and didn't bid on any of the model railroad pieces (some of the cars went for over $300 a piece!)

All 3 of us really wanted the crown and anchor wheel (complete with the wooden boards for laying down your bets) but couldn't afford the close to $800 price tag.

We didn't intend to stay all day but the items I really wanted, these various Ziploc bags and cardboard boxes full of ephemera (pronounced "ef-em-era", I've been told, not "efa-mira"!)

didn't get auctioned off until the very absolute end of the sale.  In fact, after almost having these items put on the block several times and then held back, the auctioneer called an end to the auction around 5:30 p.m. and I had to run up to the front to beg him to keep going, since we'd been there, no word of a lie, since 9 that morning waiting for these very things to go on sale.  Luckily, one of the other auctioneers took pity on me and sold me the Ziploc bags for $5 a piece (old greeting cards, cabinet card photos and old B&W photos).   When the bidding was over for the cardboard boxes (filled with old maps, letters, telegrams, more B&W photos and various other paper bits and pieces, some dating back as far as 1907), they were each mine for a mere $8 a piece.  And that was after I'd offered to pay $20 a box, he very kindly started the bidding on them at only $1 a piece.  What a steal!  Well worth the hours and hours of waiting.  It was good entertainment though, the time seemed to fly by.