Hah! You Didn't Win This Time Big Red!

About a dozen years ago Ross took me to an estate auction and I was immediately hooked. We shared an interest in, well old things.

On weekends we would comb the papers looking for estate sales and auctions.  

When you go to an estate auction, you get to preview the items first.  I liked to get there early so that I would be one of the first ones to look through the old jewelry.   That is what I was most interested in, old costume jewelry.

My interests soon expanded though, and I found out that vintage buttons were also fun along with depression glass, old hats, diaries, beaded purses, doll house furniture, and well, the list seemed to get longer and longer.

When one is an auction junkie, you find yourself among other auction junkies and we would run into the same people at the auctions.

I soon became very comfortable with the bidding process.  I have to admit that sometimes I would get carried away with the competitiveness of the bidding.  

I did have an arch nemesis.  I'll just call her "Big Red".   Somehow Big Red always seemed to know which items I wanted and more often than not I would find myself in a bidding war with her.
Actually, it wasn't only me, though.  She was a greedy bidder and quite intimidating.  It seemed as though she would bid on anything and everything.  Most of the time she would not quit until she won the bid.

It got to the point that when any of the other bidders , including me, saw that BR was bidding,  we would just drop out.

Big Red got some real bargains because of that.

But not this one time.  Nope, I wasn't going to let her win!

When the auctioneer held up the item, I was very intrigued.   No one in the room knew what this thing was, but Big Red seemed to know.   I waited until everyone else dropped out.  I'm sure BR had that smile on her face, the one she gets when she knows that she has won again.   Just as the auctioneer was ready to slam the gavel down for the final time, I jumped in with my bid.  Big Red was sitting right up in the front row, just like she always does.   I was all the way in the back of the room.  She spun around.  I guess she wanted to know who had the audacity to bid against her.   I gave her a little wave and held my number up.

In case you are not familiar with live auctions, holding your number up and not putting it down, is a signal to the other bidders that you want the item and are in it until you win.

BR was not giving up either and she let me know this by holding her number up.

We went back and forth for quite some time.   I'm sure the only ones benefiting at this point were the auctioneer and the person whose estate items he was auctioning off.

But I wasn't giving up and I got Big Red to back down!  I won! I won!
 It felt good for oh about five minutes.

I won't tell you what I paid for this thing.   And I still don't know what it is.  But it's mine all mine!