Hello everyone
I absolutely can’t believe that it is already April. I truly have been as busy as a one-armed paperhanger. I want to take a few minutes to bring you all up to date on the auction. As you probably know the auction will be in Overland Park Kansas on Saturday April 26, starting at 10:00 AM with a preview at 8:00 AM. If you can’t attend the auction in person, you will be able to bid in real time on proxibid. That is the part you already know. Now I will let you in on the part you don’t know. Harriet Ward’s collection includes over 1400 pieces of milk glass. A group of volunteers packed all this glass up several months ago. It was a huge task and resulted in over 100 boxes of glass that were transported from Massachusetts to Kansas for the auction. As the glass was packed in boxes, a diligent volunteer wrote a brief description of each item as well as the box that it was put in. I had thought that pictures were being taken as it was being wrapped, but I was wrong. As I contacted various people who had participated in the wrapping, I found out that pictures had indeed been taken, but the pictures were of the various people who were participating in this huge task, and not of the glass pieces themselves. I regret that I have misinformed people by saying that pictures were going to be available on my website.
So, here is where i am now and what you can expect. I once heard a championship auctioneer say “I can sell 600 lots gracefully at an auction” I agree with this statement. If you have more lots than this, the auction will be too long to hold a crowd. We made the decision to group the 1400 pieces into 600 lots or less. To do this, I had to start with a list of all 1400 pieces and make some sort of guess of what each piece would bring at an auction. Then I had to start to group pieces. I have tried to make sure that each lot will have enough value to warrant having it on the internet. In other words a $!0 plate won’t be sold by itself, but will be grouped with enough other pieces to bring a good bid. Now that is fine for the people who are able to attend the auction, but it won’t work for the person who is bidding online and doesn’t have a clue as to which “hen on nest” or “easter plate” is in the lot.
Here is how I am planning to make this work. I am very nearly finished with the final auction sale order and catalog, which I will post on proxibid (hopefully on Monday, April 7. We ( my wife Barb and I and June and Rick and as many other people as are available to help will converge on the VFW on Friday morning, April 25. I will have labels for each of the lots. We will have 30 tables available to display the lots. I will have a list for each of the 100+ boxes of glass that will tell in which lots each of the pieces of glass in each box are to be placed. We will work diligently until each lot is assembled. Then, I will take a picture of each lot. Hopefully the pieces in the lot match the descriptions in the catalog, but whatever you see in the picture will be what you are bidding on. I will keep taking pictures and uploading pictures onto proxibid until there are pictures for all 570 lots. I expect to be working very late, but if that is what it takes, then that is what we will do so that online bidders will be able to see pictures of what they are bidding on. The volunteers tried to make notes as to condition, but of course that is an overwhelmiing job in and of itself. I will try to get several volunteers to give me a cell phone number which I will post here on Friday night. If you have any questions about condition of a certain piece, you would be able to call one of these kind people and ask about the piece. Thank you all in advance for your patience, and for you participation in making this auction a real success for the society. Your liberal bidding will be greatly appreciated and will help to make the most of Harriet’s incredibly generous contribution to NMGCS.
Ed