Going, going, gone!

Today I did something I haven’t done for a very long time. I went to an auction.

Now, in a previous life, very many years ago, I used to do a little bit of buying and selling with a boyfriend. We did Antique Fairs to start with and then later had stands in a couple of Antique Centres. It was only a hobby and when we split up I carried on for a while, but it was too difficult trying to work full time and get out to auctions and fairs, especially when I took a day off and came back with nothing.

Recently I got the urge to start poking around in charity shops and antique places again and then my husband asked me to look out for a couple of things in the furniture line so I decided to go and have a look at our local weekly auction.  A couple of weeks ago I went to the Saturday viewing and left some bids but didn’t get anything. This week there was a little chest of drawers that was just the thing, plus a few boxes of bits and pieces that I had taken a fancy to so I went along this morning to try my luck.

I was impressed by my self-discipline.  I didn’t bid for anything that I hadn’t looked at first and I made myself a note of what certain figures turned into by the time the commission and VAT had been added.

There’s no fear of sneezing and finding you have just bought an oil painting – you have to register your name and address and prove your identity, and then they give you a big number on a laminated card which is how the auctioneer knows who to put the bid down to.  If he’s not sure (I’m saying he, because it was a he where I was, but there are, of course, lady auctioneers about too) then he will ask if you are bidding.

In my professional life I did bid for houses on behalf of clients a few times, because they were too nervous to do it themselves, so I was quite confident about that.

Anyway, I didn’t go mad, I didn’t go over my limits, so I didn’t get all the things I had hoped for, and, unfortunately, I didn’t get the piece of furniture which was what started this all off  in the first place.  I had a nice gap in the catalogue which meant I could go to the tea room for a bacon roll and a comfort break and a wander round the market stalls that they have in the grounds there.

Now I’ve got it home I’m wondering whether maybe I have made a bit of a mistake with some things, but it hasn’t cost me that much and it has been an interesting experience but I don’t think I will be doing it again for quite a while!