HVRA TEXAS CITY MEGA AUCTION
JULY 7, 2018
RECAP and OBSERVATIONS BY JERRY SIRKIN (VP)
Well if you’re like me, after 40+ years of collecting vintage radios, there’s always another good deal somewhere. That feeling was shared among 60 registered participants for our 2018 Annual Mega Auction. We had 35 HVRA registered members present and an additional 35 one day membership registrants, mostly from the adjoining TARS Hamfest. Beginning at noon, HVRA President Bill Werzner began the auction and, with the assistance of Tom Taylor, by about 5pm, approximately 325 successfully sold lots crossed the auction table. According to the latest treasurer’s report, total sales of $5200 netted HVRA $1655. Of this total gross amount, $879 were spent by the non HVRA one day registrants and on behalf of all HVRA members, we thank them for their participation. Deals??, yes there were some good ones: from the Fenton Wood estate, participants purchased a Hammarlund receiver for $340, a Drake linear amplifier and a Drake power supply for $340, a Collins speaker for $100 and a TenTec Scout receiver with power supply and band modules for $100. Another 60+ items from this estate sold for prices ranging from $1 to $75 and included Collins crystals, Heathkit receivers, power supplies and test equipment; Dentron and Knight and General Radio were among some of the other brands sold below $55. The Walter Troyer estate also recycled some vintage test equipment, radios and rare finds that sold for much less than $75. These two estates accounted for over $900 in HVRA commissions. Members sold ham equipment, vintage radios and consoles and test equipment at very reasonable prices.
Bill and a handful of volunteers arrived before 7:30 am and efficiently unloaded Bills packed van and my packed SUV and staged estate lots for final sorting and display before the auction began. At the risk of omitting someone’s name, if you helped..please stand up and take a bow..you did an awesome job getting everything organized so that the handlers could move the lots across the auction table and position them in numerical order for pick up after the 5pm checkout. Kudos to the handlers that found room for these pickup items. I stayed until after 6pm and I did not hear of any lost or misplaced lots. There is nothing easy about this auction process and all participants should be proud of their efforts. A special thanks goes to our Treasurer, Ric Slater; he was in charge of the pre-auction registrations and responsible for inputting all auction lots into the computer as Bill read each description and awarded the successful bid. All of the volunteers at the auction table performed their tasks with great dedication to details; this process and the post auction collections and payouts proceeded with very few gremlins popping up.
And yes, I did get my deals…..another AK 40 with tubes (fully ganged) and an old battery Grimes radio.
Many participants voiced their appreciation for the Boards’ efforts regarding keeping estate junk and multiple boxes of non-descript parts out of this auction. Those will go at another event. HVRA
oversees disposing of several estates submitted by families of deceased collectors, but we only brought to the auction approximately 175 items with the hope that individual members would have adequate time to auction their own collectibles in a competitive environment.
Hope everyone had a good time. If you had any problems or have suggestions, please contact Bill or me.
Select images below for larger pics and descriptions.
