Horse Auction

[sshaw@pacbell.net]

Well I didn't buy anything. Michele made one small bid on one horse but
it was quickly upped. BTW it was a silent auction. We saw all of the
horses under saddle and then running free in the arena (not all at the
same time...) Then we had an hour or more to put our bids on the sheets
tacked to each horse's stall. If you wanted to up a bid you just
increased the last bid by at least $200 and wrote in your name and
bidding number.

AT least half of the 22 =/- horses got no bids at all!! This was
probably from the high reserve placed on them (in the form of a minimum
opening bid?) Their owners wanted at least $5,000 for them and people
seemed to want better "deals."

A few horses had some very competitive bidding for them and they went
for $6,200 to $6,800. The young stallion got only one bid, for his
minimum bid of $17,000.  All I know is that the bidder was a young lady,
bidding for her boyfriend, who doesn't ride, who may have been
representing someone else.....

Lettie Smedding was pretty active, I saw her bidding number on all sorts
of sheets and she was very aggressive in bidding on one horse. But
thankfully for Hendrick she was outbid in the last minutes. Henrick says
that that was like making $6,000 (not spending it.) Though I couldn't
then convince him to comp. my hotel room.

Lots of familiar faces there. Jennifer Nice (she bought one of the high
priced bays, the one that  Becky Hart has been training?)  A whole lot
of McCrarys, Barbara said she was just window shopping (I think they
were successful on bidding on one horse.) Skip Lightfoot, the whole AERC
crowd, Tevis people and a lot of people I have never seen before at
rides or anywhere.

I would be surprised if they grossed more than $50,000 on the whole
thing. Well management made something as it took $500 just to have a
horse in it. Overall I was disappointed in the lack of some really good
horses to go after and I know that there were some people there ready to
put down $15,000 or more for a good proven horse.  There just weren't
any top ten horses there. Just expensive prospects. And who wants to pay
sales tax on a prospect?

Steve Shaw