Benefit Auction Success

Last Friday night I did an auction for the Perquimans County Athletic Boosters Club. I was approached by a member of the group a couple of months before the auction and I attended a meeting to help plan the auction. They typically offered 14-20 items at live auction and had a reverse raffle on top of selling tickets to the fundraiser dinner. I learned that 6 of the items were tickets to Perquimans County High School Athletic events and a money bag. The other 14 items included a variety of items: an antique homemade coca cola wagon, Jim Catfish Hunter framed Sports Illustrated Cover (Hertford, NC and Perquimans County is the home of Jim "Catfish" Hunter) passes to play golf at Sound GolfLinks in Albemarle Plantation, a wooden plaque of Jim "Catfish" Hunter baseball cards, different framed pictures of scenes in Hertford, NC such as our famous S bridge, a basketball signed by the 1991-1992 Duke basketball team, a fishing rod and reel, and a few other items.

I proposed something very different than what the PCABC had done in the past regarding the auction. Instead of offering the items one at a time and only once to the buyers I decided upon something very different. I would bring in two dry erase boards with the lots numbered 1-14 and have 3 rounds of bidding. The first round we would offer all the items at "high bidders choice" meaning the high bidder would have their choice of which item they wanted. The second round I would go to each item and ask the crowd would anyone like to raise the bid and if someone raised the bid I would start auctioning the item once again until the bidding ceased. The third rounds procedure was the same as the second except it was the final opportunity to raise the bid on an item.

In between each round of bidding we pulled numbers for a reverse raffle and auctioned off the Perquimans County High School sports tickets and money bag. We conducted the auction in the method mentioned above for several reasons: one to give every bidder who were not familiar with auctions every opportunity to bid and to hopefully raise more money for the PCABC.

In conclusion the auction turned out to be a success as competitive bidding by using high bidders choice in the first round resulted in high opening bids. Offering bidders two opportunities to raise the bids on individual items resulted in a 20% gain from the first round to the third round. This auction method achieved our goals of raising more money and giving the bidders who are unfamiliar with auctions every opportunity to purchase the item they wanted.