November 8, 2014
Luke and I know Mary and Rene because we were in a life group through our church together several years ago. We have kept in contact with them through various church events and Mary has been able to attend the craft weekends that I arrange through my in laws bed and breakfast. We don't get to hang out a lot but the time we have spent together has been fun and memorable. I am so happy we got to spend this particular Saturday together and I think we will both agree that it was indeed memorable. :)
It all began when I was looking through the newspaper, as usual, on a Thursday morning and I happened upon an ad for a huge pallet auction that was being held locally. Mary and I already had plans for that day and time because she had gotten word of my thrifting/couponing and wanted to see some of the treasures that I could find. We had originally planned to go to Kroger and some other shops but this looked more fun! I figured that this would be something new and adventurous for us both when I found out that neither of us had ever been to an auction like this.
I started by gathering all the info I could about the auction online and found out that there was a preview of the 300 pallets the day before. So Luke, Susan and I went and checked it out. (Mary couldn't make it because she was out of town for work until later that night). WOW! The warehouse where this is held is huge! The variety and randomness of items was insane. This particular auction seemed to be all Amazon overstock/returns and Walmart returns. I don't easily get overwhelmed when shopping is involved but I was close going to the preview.We didn't have much time and I wanted to look at everything!
Luke and I decided which pallets we would bid on and what our high bids would be. At the end of the preview we had almost 40 pallets that we wanted! We went home and got online and put in our absentee bids. We were giddy that we had high bids on over 20 at that point. The real fun was going to start the next morning when I got to meet both Susan and Mary at the live auction.
Mary and I got there after the auction had started and registered and got our bid numbers. This was the first time Mary had seen the place and she hadn't yet seen all the goodies on all the pallets. She got registered on their website and started looking ahead at the unsold pallets to see what she wanted. It was frantic with the auctioneer talking a mile a minute and people yelling putting in bids. She had not yet seen anything and was in a rush to see what she could bid on. Meanwhile, Susan and I went to where the auctioneer was and started looking at how our absentee bids were holding up against the competition. There were so many people there! We were so glad that we got a look at all the things the night before because we were both thinking it would be too overwhelming to try to see what was for sale with all the chaos going on. There was probably 100 or so people cramped into a 10 ft space in between the pallets.
I could tell that all the pallets that I had bid on were going for WAY more than what my high bid was and I was not about to pay retail for some returned items. For example if my bid was $50 the pallet would sell for $500. There was one pallet Luke told me to put $300 on well it sold for $1200. I was beginning to think I was way out of my league. There were several people there that we talked to that said they hadn't ever seen it so busy and that all the advertising for this particular sale had definitely worked on bringing in new people. This was making all the pallets go for way over what they typically would go for. Well, we waited and waited and didn't realized how long it actually takes to get through 300 pallets. We were there probably 3.5 or 4 hours when Mary decided to leave. I wanted to double check my last few pallets to see if there was anything I wanted to raise my bids on. After Mary leaves I get a text from Susan that Mary had won a pallet!! What?!? Susan was at home watching the auction live from her computer. Susan and Mary had talked about a specific one that they were both interested in. I called Mary and she didn't even know that she had won yet! I was leaving at this point so we all decided to meet up when the auction was complete to help Mary and Rene load up the stuff.
I called her to let her know that I was on my way and she informs me that she actually won two pallets. WHAT!?! How exciting! So Susan and I get there and the Gordon's are all waiting in line to pay for their goodies. Susan and I go to their stuff to dig and see what they won. HAHA. As you can see those boxes are huge. I am only 5'2 so I about fell in several times trying to grab things from the bottom of that box. I was pulling out random items and I saw a bag with a zipper at the bottom. I made Susan help me pull it out. It was a 3 room, 10 person tent! This was the best treasure among all the goodies. They had a big fan, 2 radio controlled cars, a huge rolling shoe rack, 2 patio umbrellas, a weather alert radio, a bar stool and a ton of curtain rods/blinds. I think the whole family was happy about the win!
Things weren't planned very well as to how all this was getting into their vehicle. HA. Here we all were just grabbing stuff and throwing it into their suv. We managed to find a couple of smaller boxes and a plastic bag to put stuff in but for the most part things were all over the place. Here's some pics of the girls loading up treasures!
And the after math of the car!
Rene and Mary I had so much fun that day. I can't believe that even with all my prep work of finding the perfect pallets and analyzing what I would pay and second guessing all my work the Lomax's didn't win anything but Mary went in unprepped and unsure and got two pallets! Goes to show that organized isn't always the best policy :) I still find this so funny. She is a natural at the auction. I hope you can sell some of that stuff and recoup some of the money and that you can also think of our fun time at the auction when you use your tent and shoe rack haha!
As for next time we hang out maybe we can be more low key and go to Kroger. LOL!
No comments:
Post a Comment