LURE OF A COUNTRY AUCTION (part 12 )

CONSIGNMENT AUCTIONS

A consignment auction is a sale where the items that are offered at auction are brought in by various people.  Sometimes a party doesn’t have enough items to have their own auction so this gives several people an opportunity to put all their items together to have enough stuff to make it worthwhile.  Sometimes an organization hosts the consignment auction and takes a commission off the sales.  Other times a business runs the sales and has them on a regular basis, advertising for estates and individuals to consign items to them.  Commissions vary depending on the value of the items consigned, or the amount. 

There used to be an annual sale at the Knights of Columbus Hall south of Greenwood, Wisconsin, that was always a lot of fun.  It quit happening about ten years ago, and I don’t know if the hall is even there anymore. .Good things never last.  

At this auction there would always be several hay wagons full of small items and rows of furniture, appliances, bigger merchandise, and vehicles too.  We’d usually bring up a truck load of smalls to consign in and replace them with a new load of purchases.  It was a fun time and a good fundraiser for the Knights.  One time we bought a topper for our pickup truck there and used it for years.

In the area are a few weekly consignment auctions.  Those are the ones that generally charge a fee for a bidding number and sometimes that also guarantees you a chair.  These kind of auctions are indoor sit-down sales with a crowd of regulars that come week after week.  In a way they are also a social event because if you attend regularly you make friends with others there and tend to visit a bit with them.  

Years ago there was a consignment auction house in Fairchild, Wisconsin, that had weekly sales on Saturdays.  We would go for entertainment especially in the winter when it was too cold to do much outside.  This sale had everything from household items to tools to dented cans and outdated Christmas candy.  It was fun and it was often cheap.  After a few years it folded up and is no more.

In Alma Center there was and maybe still is an annual FFA consignment auction.  It featured farm tools, implements, and much more.  One year we took a car there we wanted to sell and consigned it in.  We had a reserve on it, in other words we wanted a certain price and if no one bid up to that amount we weren’t going to sell it.  The bidding got close but it was a no sale.  But afterward a man approached us and asked for our phone number.  He did later come to our home and buy the car so it all worked out for us in the end.

THOUGHTS ON DINOSAURS

Today on the news they talked about dinosaurs

And what caused their demise

Sixty-six million years ago.

And said if they wouldn’t have disappeared

How man wouldn’t be here today

Because dinosaurs and humans don’t mix.

So why were dinosaurs here in the first place?

What part of God’s plan were they anyway?

Were dinosaurs a mistake, or an experiment?

Was their purpose and the fauna that went with them

Here to disappear, break down, and create oil

For our energy needs today?

How strange to think of their very existence.

Fossils prove to us they were real.

I’ve heard birds are actually modern dinosaurs,

Evolved, very evolved, over millions of years.

It’s hard to fathom dinosaurs

Makes you wonder, ponder, think how big

The world really is/was, and how small we are,

And how life is such a mystery.