Auctions
Sunday morning at 9:45 Ginger passed a newspaper ad for a nearby auction to David and I - saying "I know we said we'd never do another auction, but this one is really close by..." As the auction started at 10:00, and she has a lesson at 10:00, it was up to us to go. It was only 6 miles away, and the preview pictures on the website looked somewhat interesting, so go we did.
Well, as is typical for one of these auctions, it took an enormous amount of time. This is precisely what made us swear off auctions last year. You go, look at thousands of items laid out on tables and stacked around the yard, and then have to wait forever for the auctioneer to come down the row to get to the thing you have your eye on. AND THEN - someone out-bids you and you get nothing for your time. It is not uncommon for people to totally pay more than something is worth, new, just because they get caught up in the bidding. (Have we? Oh absolutely not. We did not, for instance, pay $65 for a stock tank that last week we just bought new on sale for $50. AND it was cracked to boot.)
So we got there about 10:30 and found a few things we were interested in. We ran into a neighbor so we got to shoot the breeze while waiting. About noon we'd scored a couple of big savings - a ladder and hay tarp each of which we a significant amount on. Yes, I said Hay Tarp. These things are in high demand, let me tell you - the first big crowd of the day was around the tarps. The one we got is something like 50 feet long by 15 feet, and really heavy duty. Would probably be at least $150 new and we only paid $75 for one in good condition. Since it was going to be quite a while before they reached the next thing we wanted, we carried those items to the car, got a burger for lunch, and hung out. Borred, we started wandering through the back of the lot, and found a stash of chain link panels. It was pretty hard to figure out what was to be sold, but the ad had mentioned some chain link panels, so we immediately started looking through them.
We all have a lot of contacts who are asking when our kennel will be open because they have vacation plans for the summer. Since the kennel opening is continually being pushed farther and farther out, we've thought that if we just had some pens we could at least do some dog sitting for friends. So we managed to score something like 100+ feet of panels plus a stack of gates in a variety of conditions, for less than $300. About 4:00 we were on our way home.
Last night I took the bush hog to mow the flat-ish area just north of the dog barn. Next I'll need to take the box scraper to it to level the area and more importantly lower the grade a few inches so that it is no longer higher than the barn foundation. After we get a truck load or two of gravel, courtesy of the neighbor we saw at the auction, I'll level that with the scraper. (How has my life changed since moving to the ranch? 2 words - tractor implements!)
When that's done we should be well set to erect some dog runs.
Well, as is typical for one of these auctions, it took an enormous amount of time. This is precisely what made us swear off auctions last year. You go, look at thousands of items laid out on tables and stacked around the yard, and then have to wait forever for the auctioneer to come down the row to get to the thing you have your eye on. AND THEN - someone out-bids you and you get nothing for your time. It is not uncommon for people to totally pay more than something is worth, new, just because they get caught up in the bidding. (Have we? Oh absolutely not. We did not, for instance, pay $65 for a stock tank that last week we just bought new on sale for $50. AND it was cracked to boot.)
So we got there about 10:30 and found a few things we were interested in. We ran into a neighbor so we got to shoot the breeze while waiting. About noon we'd scored a couple of big savings - a ladder and hay tarp each of which we a significant amount on. Yes, I said Hay Tarp. These things are in high demand, let me tell you - the first big crowd of the day was around the tarps. The one we got is something like 50 feet long by 15 feet, and really heavy duty. Would probably be at least $150 new and we only paid $75 for one in good condition. Since it was going to be quite a while before they reached the next thing we wanted, we carried those items to the car, got a burger for lunch, and hung out. Borred, we started wandering through the back of the lot, and found a stash of chain link panels. It was pretty hard to figure out what was to be sold, but the ad had mentioned some chain link panels, so we immediately started looking through them.
We all have a lot of contacts who are asking when our kennel will be open because they have vacation plans for the summer. Since the kennel opening is continually being pushed farther and farther out, we've thought that if we just had some pens we could at least do some dog sitting for friends. So we managed to score something like 100+ feet of panels plus a stack of gates in a variety of conditions, for less than $300. About 4:00 we were on our way home.
Last night I took the bush hog to mow the flat-ish area just north of the dog barn. Next I'll need to take the box scraper to it to level the area and more importantly lower the grade a few inches so that it is no longer higher than the barn foundation. After we get a truck load or two of gravel, courtesy of the neighbor we saw at the auction, I'll level that with the scraper. (How has my life changed since moving to the ranch? 2 words - tractor implements!)
When that's done we should be well set to erect some dog runs.
Labels: Ranch
posted by Monica at Sun Pony |
5:02 PM
1 Comments:
Now you can understand why eBay has made a big dent in the auction business and practically killed the antique business. But then again, I can't see anyone selling a lot of chain link panels on eBay!
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