Auction

I go to estate, rummage and garage sales and find wonderful bargains there.  I like going to thrift shops, especially when they have bag sales.  I cheerfully stuff those bags full of name brand clothes, hardly used.

I almost never go to auctions or flea markets.

I've found that vendors at flea markets know exactly what they are selling and ask high prices.  I find no bargains and often have to pay a fee to get into the market.  Not for me.

Auctions are even worse because excited crowds get into bidding wars.  My father used to go to them and came home with boxes of junk that stayed in the basement until after he died.

Today, because a friend was closing out his parents' estate, Gary took me to an auction. A big auction. Cars were lined up and down the roadway and filled farm fields.

This couple had lived in the same house for at least sixty years and hadn't thrown anything away.  The house, double car garage, shed and barn were filled with decades of stuff. We walked around the farmyard looking at box after box.  

There was so much of this that it was a two ring circus with one set of auctioneers in front of the garage and another in front of the shed.

Everything was being sold, even a bunch of burlap bags. People bid on everything no matter how much how shoddy it was. A plastic pheasant statue came up and the auctioneers started the bidding at $10 and the bids kept going up from there.  Unbelievable.  

I was told that an old stack of comic books went for $425.

I told Gary to take a look at everything and think about his own hoarding ways.  I don't know that it made much difference.

We left without bidding on anything.  I'll stick to rummage sales instead.