Spring All-Day Auction SUNDAY April 3

Have you heard? The Spring All-Day Auction is rapidly approaching. Here's what the schedule looks like:

8:30 am Set-up begins

9:30 am Registration opens

10:30 am Tag Sale opens

11:00 am Auction begins

1:00 pm Raffle #1

2:00 pm Tag Sale ends

3:00 pm Raffle #2

~4:30 pm Auction ends, check-out (duration of auction depends on number of items)

6:00 pm Take-down complete

Our All-Day Auctions are lots of fun. Aquarists love to see all those different fish, plants, shrimp and their associated stuff. It excites our imaginations and love for the hobby. The auctions are also necessary to fund the club's many activities.

How can you help our club have a successful auction?

Volunteers - many helping hands make for lighter work. We have point people identified and assigned for each of the major areas but need some more help. If every club member attending the auction donates 1 or 2 hours of their time, all the work gets done, and you get to relax and enjoy the auction for the remainder. Here's where we need help and can get you up to speed quickly:

• Registration Desk - 2 people to help Megan assign bidder cards

• Corral - 2 people to help Andrew, Jacob, and Mark organize the auction items

• Tag Sale - 2 people to help Manuel and Bob record sales

• Projectionist - 2 people to run the projector

• Runners - lots of people to transport auction items from corral to auctioneer and then to buyer

• Check-out - 4 people to help organize and enter clerking tags with Michael and Raychel

• Set-Up and Take-Down - lots of people to arrive early (8:30 am) to set up, others to stay late (6 pm) to put it all away

MyGroupAuctions - without desirable items to buy, bidders won't come. We need to entice them with lots of cool stuff entered into MGA sooner rather than later. Don't wait until the last minute to enter items into MGA. You can always edit it later. The timing makes a huge difference to our turnout and ultimate success, not to mention increasing the fun factor.

Curiously, there aren't any tag sale items entered into MGA yet. Usually those are the first items to be entered, and I suspect it's because we didn't have a tag sale at the half-day auction last Fall. This weekend is a good time to go through your fishroom, evaluate your equipment needs, and enter items with a fixed price. Please be honest with yourself about the condition of the item. Sometimes folks enter items into the Tag Sale that really have served their useful life and simply need to be retired. But if an item is in good working condition and you just don't need it, perhaps someone else will be able to put it to good use.

Get the word out - Like the event and share the post on the club's Facebook page, or the Craig's List posting (can we even do that?). It always amazes me how many people learn about these events through Craig's List.

See y'all there!