Recession Woes, My Personal Gain?

In the last 3 weeks I've been to two charity events. One for each child's school. In prior years, these things were guady affairs, tons of items up for auction, people drinking too much, overbidding on everything and I usually walked away with my wallet intact.

Not this year.

At my son's school auction, they didn't serve alcohol, other than wine. It was low key and the number of items being offered was cut in half. The items in the auction were similar to prior years but the silent auction sheets were devoid of bids. I wound up snagging, among other things, lunch at google ($200) as part of a painting buy and tickets to see the Mets at the new stadium this summer. I split this one with another parent as our sons are friends and he and I were the only ones bidding. We picked up the tickets for $600. The face value of the four tickets? $920. A fucking steal.

Well, last night was my daughter's auction. Last year, the one thing I wanted was a chance to have your kid drawn into a Marvel Comic. Joe Quesada is a parent at the school and his family always donates all kinds of comic book art etc. So, last night I went in prepared to spend a few bucks on the comic book. I figure, it's cool as hell, I can probably get both kids in and you get a tour of Marvel so, once there, who knows what else you might walk away with.

During the course of the night, I got involved in bidding for a few other things. I wound up winning a pair of original spiderman drawings. They're plates or inserts or something. Straight out of a comic. They had a wolverine one but I know nothing of this genre so, when the bidding closed and I wond the spidey stuff I was pumped for my son. Someone told me the wolverine panel was better, it was the original artist and worth far more. So? My son lives for spiderman. He likes wolverine but spidey is the nuts.

Anyway, the wife is running around bidding on stuff and the live auction is about to begin.

I'm all psyched up. The first few items go up and don't sell for very much. The annual Drury signed jersey and ranger tix deal goes for half of what it usually does. The class art is not selling. One of my friends wound up buying the art from a different class because he felt bad that nobody bid on it.

Then they auction off a month at a very well known summer camp. This must be a $5,000 or more value. $250. That's it.

I knew I was going to have competition but I figured it wouldn't be bad.

Last year, the comic went for $6,000. I dropped out at $1,000. I knew it wasn't mine and I didn't bother playing when I knew I wasn't going to win. Not tonight. No, I wanted this thing and I wanted it bad.

They called the lot number. 6, a Marvelous something or other. Here we go. The bidding starts. $250. $350. My wife asks why I'm not bidding. I lean over and tell her, no point bidding now. Let it run up first.

It goes to $600 and suddenly nobody is left. I raise my card. $650. It jumps to $750, then $800. I bid.

$850.

Going once.

Holy fuck, that's it?

Going Twice....


Motherfucker, I stole this thing. This is insane and

"$900 just in time from the lovely woman in the back"

Son of a bitch. It's my daughter's reading buddy's mother. She's smiling at me. She's a former model or she should be a former model. Her, and her husband are standing there, smiling, like they got this thing. They think they're stealing this. Good looking couple. Not too bright, it seems.

I raise my hand, never taking my eyes off of them.

$1,000.

He goes to $1,100

My hand never goes down.

He walks towards me. My hand is still up. He's smiling, I'm smiling. I'm slowly nodding at him, letting him know he's wasting his time. He says "wanna take it outside?"

I laugh, I say "sure, as soon as I win this."

"Sir, are you bidding or is your hand stuck in the up position?" asks the auctioneer.

"Bidding, $1,200"

"You can put your hand down, Sir"

"When he's done, I will."

Handsome guy smiles and says, take it.

Everyone applauds. I get a few claps on the back.

I get up, walk over and introduce myself to handsome guy. The wife I already met. She had told him who we were when he saw someone else bidding for the book.

We hung out a bit, nice guy, I told him I was planning on asking if we could toss a few kids into the book (my daughter and son) and if they can do two, they can probably do three and we'll get his son in.

The second to last item was something I was considering as well. A trip to Howard Stern's show, you get to hang out, watch the show and then hang out and do the post show wrap with Gary and some other dude. Meeting Howard Stern was not a guaranty. It was at $350 and I turned to a friend and asked if he wanted to go. $400 for that was pretty cheap. We opted out. In the end, paying $12 to only meet Gary wasn't worth it. $400 seemed pointless.

On the way out I met Joe Quesada's wife. Well, met her again, I met her last year. She saw what we won and told us to call her husband to set it up etc. She said they had a ton of stuff that they grabbed for the auction that they didn't use. She said "remind me in the school yard, we'll make arrangements to get it to your son." When I asked why she said "I have a daughter, we have tons of that stuff, you were tonight's big donor (frightening for a variety of reasons, mostly because I didn't spend that much money) and I need to the room.

Not going to turn down that offer.

So, over the course of the last three weeks, I've scored insane Met tickets, some cool comic book items, a special day for my daughter ( we got the one thing she wanted) and a variety of other smaller items that made my wife very happy.

No I need to figure out how I plan on paying for it all.