Dear all,
Today, with high excitement, we left for Owen Sound on a mission to attend the 'Grew' boat auction. Grew is sadly no longer in business and they were selling off everything in the yard... this sparked a major interest from Darren so off we went.
On arrival at the sight, we couldn't believe how many people were also in in attendance.. there were cars lined up and down the Highway, it was insane! Vince and Ben joined us shortly after we arrived and started to scoot around, looking at what was on offer. http://www.sydenhamauction.com/
Darren was fairly interested in some of the boats but his only concern was that they all came without motors (i.e.**an extra $10000 on top of the buying price) but we were undeterred and continued to look around. There was SO much stuff - they had boat 'parts' as well as an indoor arena filled with everything 'boat' you could imagine including boat grease and boat paint. This auction was going to turn out to be a long day...
The auctioneer started inside and we soon realized that it would be a long tome before anything of interest would come up onto the plate. They were actioning off bottles of strange liquids [one by one..] and room itself, being filled with what seemed like hundreds of large-ish men was started to resemble a pressure cooker. I stepped out after 5 minutes followed by Vince and Ben and then Darren. We decided to take a break for breakfast before we came back.
After a lovely breakfast back with Kerry at home, we ventured back to the auction and they were just getting to the 'boat seats', something D was very interested in. D sprung into action while Vince and I watched on from the 'outer ring'. It was fascinating people watching at this event - there were clearly many seasoned professionals and dealers and many remarked when we arrived 'back' into the auction house, everyone is watching everyone else, all the time!
It was also highly exciting for me watching the auctioneers talking their strange 'actioneer-ish' dialect which appears impossible for anyone else to understand merely by the speed and decibels at which they regale their spiel. A favorite on TV at the moment is 'Storage Wars' - it's hilarious and very educational ( think Antiques Roadshow meets Wall Street' and totally representative of a regular auction. http://www.aetv.com/storage-wars/
Darren started to bid on some seats but was sadly out bid by an opponent. We then moved outside for the boat auction and then the real fun began. Unfortunately, there were clearly some feverish dealers in the group who preceded to clear up with the boats. It was fun to watch though and I was happy as had made friends with a 10 week old Labrador puppy that was also attending the auction.
Darren was also tempted with this gorgeous mahogany ancient speed boat ( that needed a huge amount of repair) but he thought that his Dad might like it as a restoration project. Again, the dealers got in there quick and it was sold for $2200 (but D mentioned that restored, it could fetch $120,000!!!)
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