You're in at $10
Last Thursday Terry said "So, what are you doing on Saturday"? I replied "Nothing - but at least sleeping past 5 am - Why?".
Wanna go to a Fish Auction? What?? Seriously??
Yep...a Fish Auction...hosted by the Eastern Iowa Aquarium Assocation. I said "What do they auction?". He said he had no idea, but "viewing" is a 9 am and the auction starts at 10 am. Wanna Go?
I said "Sure"..."Why not". So we invited our Fish partner in crime, Kath, and proceeded to make plans for the day. I visited the EIAA website for more info ( http://www.finflap.com/ )and found the "rules" of the auction, and if you were interested in purchasing live fish, you would need to bring a cooler. A Cooler? What are they...on ice??
So Saturday morning, we got ready, picked out a cooler to take along ( the playmate which holds a 12 pk) and I said - "are we taking the car or the truck"? "Well, the truck of course", (which was the reply)...just in case we find a tank". OMG OH NO.
So we loaded up the truck and moved to Beverly...Fish Hills that is...(just kidding).
First on the day's agenda though was every hungry man's dream: Breakfast at Riley's on Centerpoint Rd. Pretty good home cooked food and lots of it. Who knew what we for in for so we needed a nutritious filling breakfast. Met up with our fish addiction enabler (Hi Kath!) and once we were done with breakfast - set off to find the church the auction was hosted in. Can't be that bad since a church was hosting right?
Got to the church about 9:15 where we found nine tables of various items of fish aquarium paraphernalia. There were heaters, floating logs, air hose, filter floss for DIY filters and yes...live fish double bagged so there would be no "leakage" during the day.
So the procedure was to look around a write down on a tablet the number of the item(s) you were interested in. That way, when they came up during the auction, you knew which items to bid on. So I drew a line on my 8x10 piece of paper and it quickly filled up with both Kath's numbers and Terry's numbers. So about 30 minutes into the viewing Terry said..."How bout I go out and get you the notepad that's in my truck? That way you have more paper to write on." Good thinking big guy!
You can see where this is headed right?
Buy the way, you should probably know that auctions are really Terry's thing. He LOVES them. So once the viewing was concluding, Terry got in line to get a number. Surrendered his drivers license for "security" purposes and brought me a lovely yellow paddle with luck number 136 on it.
I should mention that people are still bringing in items when the auction finally starts about 10:30. Periodically Terry gets up and finds another number to add to the list. Kath had to run to a meeting but gave me strict instructions not to go more than $2 per fish on the bags that she wanted...and no more than $30 total. She said I'll text you when I'm done with my meeting to see what you've got.
By 11:30 they had only finished one table. I should also point out that Terry loves to help the auctioneer get things started by early bidding. One of our first purchases ends up being a box of "stuff" he got for $2. (He usually gets a couple of these during the day). Would you believe the next one had drift wood in it and after I signed for it, the guy who brought it came up and told him - that it would probably take a while to water log it because it was in a reptile tank. So geez...another but load of driftwood that won't sink. It's now posted on craigslist for sale. LOL.
So the auction is underway and up comes a new top for a 55 gallon tank (which we just happen to need). OMG I want that - but wait - It's not on the list! Terry starts to bid at $5 and get's out at $13 so I look over and he's in line to get a friggin hot dog! So I jump into the bidding and get that sucker for mere $18. He comes back and says "Did you buy that?" I sure did. It's the steal of the day.
Pretty soon, some of our numbers finally start to come up and Terry starts bidding and jumps out as the bid goes above what he's willing to pay. This is soooo exciting! So I start bidding on stuff - and the auctioneer says "do you two communicate"? cuz your bidding against each other. Of course the room errupts into laughter and its just a fun atmosphere. So I had to start paying attention to when Terry was bidding and keep the paddle down. It's not fair cuz he was just bobbing his head up and down. Must be some kind of silent "guy" language at auctions.
So the live fish come in every so often and the hotest item of the day seemed to be these beautiful baby angel fish - about the size of a nickel. I so wanted some of those - but Terry made we quit at $8. He said "We really have no place for angel fish because they need a tall tank".
I said, "That's ok. There's a tall hex tank in the back - at least 30 gallons and I wrote the number down so I can bid on it." HAH! By this time, Kath returned and it became a lot of fun watching her try to bid on fish. She has a beautiful tank of African Chiclids all different types and colors.
Apparently Chiclids are the hottest fish in this area - so the few tropicals that came up were bid on furiously. But as I said, auctions are Terry's thing and six bags of fish later (that's 18 total fish) we were going to add Neon Green, Blue pearl and Pineapple swordtails to our community tank. At the end of the day, he bid on a got a bag of Angel fish (5 total). They are so cool - orange, black and silver. So the plan was to bid on the hex tank - yep another tank.
OMG - Matt was right - we ARE becoming fish hoarders.
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