AUCTION DAY

Ok so here we are at this big warehouse filled with used restaurant equipment. I’m kinda giddy. I love this stuff. My girly girlfriends get this way about a good sale or Nordstrom or makeup…. For me it’s restaurant equipment
John, who runs the auction and who showed me around about a week ago, urges me to pay my $200 deposit and get a bidding number anyway. I get my money back if I don’t buy anything. So I do.
My plan is to sit back and watch. I’m watching to see who’s bidding who’s a fake bidder or shill and just to see how it all works.

There were about 50 buyers and 400+ lots to sell. The only thing I thought I might really buy if it was cheap was the Montague gas fired double convection oven. Everything else I was interested in I’d just log in the sales price for future reference.
And trust me there was LOTS of stuff I’d have bought if I had a place to put it. There were some great bargains to be had.

It was pretty funny. Throughout the auction, the auctioneer had been talking to all the buyers. There was a guy who looked like he was from India and another guy whose name and his accent sounded middle eastern who were bidding against each other. The auctioneer taunted them, promising the rest of us a fist fight and keeping score on their purchasing record.


My oven was lot 210.
11 am the auction starts. It starts with all sorts of junk. Yellowed used Cambro containers, huge used pickle buckets, old menu covers from a restaurant called Islands in some Hawaiian hotel, bus tubs, which Kim and I both bought for $4.50 each… too late when I/we realized 2 things. Restaurant Depot sells them for $3.99 AND these ones are half the depth of the bus tubs I like to use. So note to self, always have a plan. Always preview and mark down the lot numbers you like and always note the “don’t cross this line” price. No impulse purchases. I don’t think fast under that kind of pressure.

Anyway, finally about 12:45 they were finished with the small wares and moving on to the good stuff like tilt skillets and ranges and stainless prep tables. But we were still only on about lot 150…Did I mention I have a catering drop off for 20 , which requires some prep and heating up at 4 pm?
So at 1:45 finally, we get to lot 210.

Onto the bidding…