Sounds like the ol' baseball chant, "hey, batter-batter-batter...", that's what it sounds like an auctioneer is sayin' half the time, but with a lot more bidder-bidder-bidder's. I can never understand what those guys are sayin'. We went to a City of Phoenix auction on Saturday. It started at 8am; we ended up staying until around 2pm. It was a hot day... let me rephrase that... it was a VERY HOT and HUMID day. I made the mistake of dressing Caitie in overalls; she was miserable most of the time, even crying and demanding to leave right before the outside auction was over. I figured her behavior was due to not getting enough sleep and being hot, but I found out later that she was coming down with a cold; poor thing.There were gas pumps. I kept trying to figure out what we would do with them had we been crazy enough to bid on them. We didn't hang around each item being auctioned off, so I don't know who bid on them and what they went for. I would like to know where they're being relocated to. Wouldn't you? I mean, come on, this is interesting stuff. If you don't live where there's an HOA, or if you do and it's one like we have, you may see these beauties in a neighbor's front yard as decor. At least you wouldn't have to go far for gas. Always look on the bright side of things, I say.
One of the reasons we went to this particular auction was because of this big red beauty. Michael's like a little kid when it comes to fire engines. Caitie shares his enthusiasm; she would love to have one of these to play with. I asked Michael why he needs a fire truck... I finally figured out that it's a guy thing. There were four fire trucks in all up for auction, three '89s and one '81. The first three went for around $4,500 each, the latter one went for $3,600. If they had stayed under $3,000, you would have heard a siren outside your house, most likely. Michael planned to go to everyone's house to show it off. Maybe he would have offered to wash your house?
Here's the inside of one of the fire trucks. Caitie fits right in with her cool baseball hat and red shades. She wasn't too thrilled with how dirty it was inside.
This was the first fire truck up for auction. Look hard and you'll see a Channel 3 news guy with a camera in the crowd, he was aimed right at me, so I hid behind my camera and decided to take a pic of him filming me taking a pic of him, or somethin' like that.
This was the last item up for auction. This is a huge generator that could light up the city of Phoenix, or at least one of the streets in the city of Phoenix. The opening bid on most big items was $25,000, but always ended up going down to the $1,000 range before anyone would start bidding. We at first thought we might get a chance to bid on it when it stayed in the $2,000 range, but it soon shot up to $13,000, which was the final bid, and it wasn't from us. Michael said it would have been nice to use at our property up north. I wonder how loud it is when running? I didn't give that any thought until now. Some small generators are pretty loud, so I can only imagine how loud this one is.
A side view of it.
When we left the above auction, we headed over to another auction being held indoors. We didn't stay long though, there wasn't much we were interested in.
As you can see here, these auctions are populated by men folk; there's my hubby in the middle of the pack. We had a nice time at the auctions. I know it would have made us the most popular family on the block, but I'm not sad we didn't end up with a fire truck and gas pumps.
