Event Reports

13th Post Christmas Auction - Wednesday 1st February 2017

We held our 13th Post Christmas Auction on Wednesday 1st February at the Grey Horse and what a cracking auction it was !!!

The idea is that you bring along all your unwanted Christmas presents, together with other stuff you no longer want, or have the room for, donate them to the branch, and we auction them off to the highest bidder. We then split the proceeds with 2/3 being donated to the MAG Fighting Fund, with the remaining 1/3 going to charities as voted on after the event.

The turnout this year was a bit down compared to the previous year, but what we lacked in numbers, we certainly didn't lack in donations as we had a significant number of items to auction off. There was lots of bike related gear donated, with lots of opportunities to kit yourself out with a complete full range of riding gear. We also had a number of hugely generous donations from local dealers and traders (see list below).

Just some of the auction items
Just some of the auction items
Just some of the auction items

Importantly, our eager audience had all visited the cashpoint beforehand, and were more than ready to part with their cash to grab some bargains !!!

Chas kicked off the auctioneering at 8:10pm, handed over to Martin after an hour and a half and we finally called it a day at 11:00pm.

Chas the Auctioneer
Martin the Auctioneer

There was particularly frenzied and competitive bidding for a good number of items, with many fetching good sums. Others went for ridiculously low prices, which obviously gave the winning bidder a fantastic bargain. We managed to clear the vast majority of items, a quite amazing feat in itself. The few remaining items of biking gear we have since donated to Huddersfield MAG so they can sell them at their forthcoming top box sale (with MAG benefitting from the proceeds !!!). Everyone who attended seemed to thoroughly enjoy themselves and most folks got multiple bargains.

Finally, it was time for our 'accountants' Clare and Cathy to do the sums.

Clare & Cathy, our intrepid book keepers

They ran out of fingers so it was off with the shoes and socks and they just kept on adding ... and adding. Last year's auction raised £438.05, with the raffle raising a further £52 ...... we've beaten that this year ...... The 2017 auction raised £449.50, with the raffle raising a further £46 ...... not quite the branch record (which was 600 quid in 2012) ..... but not far off !!! Bearing in mind the bidding on a lot of items started at 50p, this is a staggering and truly impressive result !!!!

We rounded up the amount to £510 so it was nicely divisible by 3, so the MAG fighting fund will receive £340 (2/3 of the proceeds), and the remaining 1/3, split between the following worthy charities:

A huge thanks to our auctioneers, Chas & Martin, and to Clare and Cathy who kept track of all the bids all evening with the tallying skills of seasoned accountants (turf, not financial ;-) ... Seriously though, splendid effort ladies !!!

Particular thanks have to go out to the following local dealers and traders for their most generous donations:

They are all heroes for supporting MAG and thoroughly deserve your business.

Finally, thanks to everyone who attended and parted with their hard earned cash.

We will be holding our 14th Post Christmas Auction in a years time, so hope to see you there.