Auction score!

Benedetto's holds a weekly auction, every Tuesday evening. You never know what you're going to find on offer; the website lists descriptions and some photographs of the variety of items that will be up for bid, but it isn't until you get there (items are available for preview after 2PM the day of the auction) that you can examine everything up close.

I've been to this auction 3 times now. The first time, I left my wallet at home, on purpose - I went to watch, and to learn. I was definitely afraid that if I sneezed or scratched my ear that I'd end up with a chandelier as my latest possession, but this isn't at all the case. It's a really interesting process, though. First thing you do when you arrive at this shell of a warehouse building, which is really in the middle of nowhere on Gandy Boulevard, across from the dog track (which was featured in the first remake of Ocean's Eleven, BTW), is to check in at the cashier's window and get a bidder's ticket with a number on it. If you've got a tax registration number, you give the nice lady a copy of it and you won't have to pay sales tax for your purchases that day. (No exceptions to this rule; it does you no good to hand her your business card instead.) The nice lady then gives you a copy of the details of the lots up for bid that day.

Everything is laid out on trays, tables, and shelves, all over the warehouse. Every lot is assigned a number. Lots of high value are kept behind locked cabinets but are also available for inspection before the sale. Sometimes you'll find television sets, beds, sofas, outboard boat engines, stacks of framed art, diamonds, china cabinets, china; you name it. Every week the selection is different.

So my first visit, as I said, I was there to observe, and to learn. What impressed me the most was the speed of the process - everything happens really quickly, as there is just so much to get through during the evening's bidding. The room quickly becomes filled with people who want to bid; and there's a lady with a laptop sitting next to the auctioneer, taking bids from the internet; and another person taking phone bids. it's a very lively place. I found myself holding my breath just at the speed at which bids were flying in, and lots would fly past on their wheeled tables - whoosh! If you stopped to speak to someone for a conversation, you could miss several lots' worth of bidding - it's that fast. I came away from that first visit knowing that I would have to look very carefully, make my selections before the bidding ever started, and decide what my top prices would be - or else I could easily spend more than I intended in the heat of the moment, in trying to "win" over another bidder in pursuit of the same lot. Would it be worth it? You would really have to keep your wits about you to make a wise purchase!

The second trip to Benedetto's was with Bob; again, it was to be a reconnaissance of the lay of the land and the process of how to go about the auction process. This time, though, we picked up a bidder's ticket (though we hadn't yet, at that time, received our tax registration number). We took a look at some of the lots, made some notes on the printout of what we were interested in, and sat down as the action began.

Well, let's just say that the passion of the action rather ran away with us... we made some purchases that evening, but not on any of the lots that we'd looked at beforehand! We ended up bidding on several lots that looked interesting as they came up, and we won. And there was another lot they we'd had our eye on, which was picked up and moved to another table, so Bob started bidding on it - only he was actually bidding on something else entirely! He thought he was bidding on a glass bowl, but we won an antique table. And a very lovely one it is, too. Good thing it fit into the car that night, though we would have been able to retrieve it within 2 days of the sale. Our purchases that night were impulsive, daring, and just beautiful. We felt reckless and, at the time, vowed never to try the auction process again - it was far too dangerous for the likes of us. Yet I knew that I wouldn't be able to stay away for very long....

Which brought us to last night. We were in somewhat of a bind; we'd sold quite a high volume of items during our first two shows, and so had to restock. We also knew that we wanted to upgrade our overall selection. You can find some great items at garage sales, but they are labor intensive, as you have to devote a lot of time and cover a large area to find those nuggets of treasures. I decided to take the plunge and try the auction again. I knew that we could take care in looking the lots over before the bidding started, and we could decide to only bid on those lots that we'd determined were what were suitable - no exceptions.

I selected several lots that contained multiple items within them. These can be somewhat of a crapshoot, as you can get some lower quality items in addition to the desirable few that you're really after. The idea is to keep your bidding within the limits that you've set for yourself for those items that you're really trying to get - those other items in the lot are superfluous, and can be used in trade with other dealers, if they are really items that you don't desire as part of your inventory.

I kept the bids low, and dropped out of more than half of what I had preselected. We won 5 different bids, and at the end of the evening, boxed up 6 cartons of beautiful merchandise, including some stunning American art pottery, some pre-1921 Nippon porcelain, some elegant American glass, some painted Victorian glass vases, and some oddities, too. I am so pleased that we stuck to our guns in the prices we decided to pay, and especially with the lots that we'd selected for bidding. I think that we made some great choices, and we had a lot of fun!

This weekend we're doing a single day market, as we do the Privateer Thieves' Market on Anna Maria Island this Saturday, February 9th. We'll be under the palm trees along the beach of the Gulf of Mexico - couldn't be a more beautiful setting.