Where do I get that Floridia Auction License?

We had an auction yesterday March 4th and the forcast was for a major winter storm. As I have blogged before, we tend to get good results when the weather is bad. This storm was a little worse than the previous ones and did keep a few people from attending, however we still had a good crowd and sold out our sale. We got great prices on our Lionel trains and the shotguns in the estate, furniture was strong for the most part with good prices on bedroom, and front room pieces, we fell short on a computer hutch but such specialty pieces have a limited appeal.

We did return home to find our auction tent that we had set up for a sale next week completely colapsed. The storm that put 2 or 3 inches at our auction site (we were in a nice heated warehouse), dropped over 12 inches at the site of our next auction (the next one is under the tent). The tent didn't suffer much permanent damage (one tear that we fixed), but it took all day and part of the night to shovel off the tent, find the 24" pegs that were flung by the tent falling, pull the main pole out of the ground where the weight of the teny had driven it down 6" into the ground, re-erect the tent, and shovel under the freshly re-erected tent.

There was a little tunnel in the knocked down tent that I would have loved if I was 12. Truth be known I found it pretty cool at my present age of 49. As I walked through the way cool dark tunnel I hit my 49 year old head on the 2nd main pole which had fallen over to perhaps a 30 degree angle. NOT cool.

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We got the tent fixed today and hung our banner in a few days we will take the cargo trailer over and finish the setup.

This will be one I won't soon forget.

Tom Young, Number One

We lost Tommy Young yesterday and I wanted to let the rest of you know how I feel about it.

Tommy was my favorite bidder, I'm sorry the rest of you it is just how I feel. When we started giving out permanent numbers Tommy was the first one we gave out so he was number one.

Tommy drove a long way to get to our auctions (a lot further than most of us) so he liked to leave early. In fact it was normal for Tommy to beat us to our own auctions. We have our previews at 9:00 am and we like to get to the auctions by 8:00, we would pull up, see Tommy's Snoopy Mobile (white truck with a Snoopy on it) and know it was going to be a good auction.

One time when we pulled up to an auction not only had Tommy beat us to the auction, he had shoveled the driveway of all the snow!

My daughter Ali called Tommy her adopted Grandpa. He once brought a peach cake to our auction, Ali said was the best cake she ever had. I tend to believe her because she told me she had 17 pieces of it. Tommy and our other bidders would help us carry in our stuff, then they would snoop around. I liked to make what I called Tommy bait piles, they were piles with copper wire, copper scrap, brass and and whatever Snoopy item I could find in them. He always found them.

Tommy and Fred loved to dig in dark corners, they always brought flashlights to the auctions and crawled into the deepest darkest corners of the basements and the garages. Tommy loved to help us, he often held stuff up during the auctions so others could see it. Once when he was holding up what he thought was a lighter he gave it a flick to show it worked, the only problem was that the "lighter" was pepper mace and Tommy maced the auction by accident. You never saw 70 people leave an auction so fast. Luckily they almost all stayed and the auction was a great success. Tommy got a new nic-name from me for a few auctions he became Dr. Pepper.

Tommy loved to tease my staff (our clerk Pagette was his favorite tease target) and he could take it as well as he could dish it out. We had an auction where I made a little pile with a Fedora hat, a 2 piece pool cue and a VHS tape of Superfly (it was when Tom's brother Ted was in town from Idaho). When I got to that little pile I said Tommy where are you I'm selling the Superfly collection you've got get yourself in here and bid. He did and he won the stuff, he wore that hat and carried the pool cue the rest of the day. We called him Superfly for months.

Tommy was a giving man and he hauled watermelons and other produce in the summer. When he wasn't hauling he would show up at the auctions with watermelons for the staff. Once we did an auction in Eolia about 2 hours north of St. Louis and about a 4 hour drive from Tom's stomping grounds. He showed up with enough watermelon for everyone at that auction, most of whom were people he had never met before and would never see again.We are going to miss Tommy.

We are retiring his number, there will never be another Tommy and there will never be another number one at our auctions. I know right now some where in heaven St. Peter is saying "I've got this golden street now who will give me $50" and Tommy is saying "$5 let's go"