Our 12th Post Christmas Auction was held on Wednesday 27th January 2016 at our HQ, the Grey Horse on Kirkgate, Wakefield. The idea behind the auction is that everyone brings along all their unwanted Christmas presents, together with any other stuff no longer wanted, or have the room for, donate these to the branch, and we then auction them off to the highest bidder. The proceeds are then split with 2/3 being donated to the MAG Fighting Fund and the remaining 1/3 donated to charitable causes.
We were very pleased to welcome along members of Leeds, Huddersfield, Sheffield and Rotherham, Barnsley and Doncaster MAG groups, the Yorkshire Region Rep, together with our own members (both regular and irregular attendees), and lots of others, a good few of which aren't even bikers, they just come along for the bargains.
Most people brought items with them to donate, so we had an immense amount of stuff to auction off, with the obvious unwanted Christmas presents, garage / shed / loft / cupboard / wardrobe clearouts, and other assorted 'junk' (but it's certainly true that one person's junk is another person's treasure).
There was lots of bike related gear donated this year, including six helmets, several bike jackets, several pairs of armoured bike trousers, multiple pairs of gloves, multiple pairs of boots. You could pretty much have kitted yourself out with a complete full range of riding gear.
Additionally, lots of other clothing, CD's, DVD's, books, household items, camping gear and enough aftershave, perfume and make-up to fill a small branch of Boots. We also had a number of hugely generous donations from local dealers and traders (see list below).
Once we had issued everyone with a bidding number and Lorna had done the rounds with the raffle tickets, the auction started bang on 8pm and went on for over two hours.
Some items just had to be modelled for maximum sales effect ....
There was particularly frenzied and competitive bidding for a good number of items, with many fetching big sums. Others went for ridiculously low prices, which obviously gave the winning bidder a fantastic bargain.
Our auctioneers Chas & Martin did a most splendid job, as it's not easy auctionnering solidly at a tremendous pace for well over an hour each.
We cleared most of the items, and then had a 'make us an offer' table top sale. The best of the remaining items have been put on one side as tombola prizes for our Bike Show in May. Other miscellaneous remaining items were donated to the Wakefield Hospice shop. The unsold helmets and an expensive tent (which had a reserve price owing to it's value) we are selling seperately (Check the items out on our For Sale page). Everyone who attended seemed to thoroughly enjoy themselves and most folks got multiple bargains.
Finally, it was time for our 'accountants' Clare and Sharon to do the sums
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 £400, with the raffle raising a further £45 ...... we've beaten that this year ...... The 2016 auction raised £438.05, with the raffle raising a further £52 ...... not quite the branch record (which was 600 quid in 2012) ..... but a jolly decent sum all the same. 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 £490 so it was nicely divisible by 3, so the MAG fighting fund will receive £330 (2/3 of the proceeds), and the remaining 1/3, dividing into 3 lots of £55 for NABD, Yorkshire Air Ambulance and the Wakefield Hospice.
A rather splendid start to the new year !!!!
Particular thanks have to go out to the following local dealers and traders for their most generous donations:
They are all heroes and thoroughly deserve your business.
A Special thanks to our organisers - Chas, Martin, Clare, Sharon, Lorna and Steve (although he didn't do much ;-) ... who helped the evening go so smoothly.
We will be holding our 13th Post Christmas Auction in January next year so, hope to see you there.