Ottawa Valley Aquarium Society Annual GIANT AUCTION – March 24th, 2013

Ottawa Valley Aquarium Society Annual GIANT AUCTION – March 24th, 2013

This year, the Ottawa Valley Aquarium Society (OVAS) combined their annual auction held on the Sunday with a Saturday slate of guest speakers and  a room full of vendors to produce a fun-filled weekend dubbed AQUAMANIA.

Today’s entry will focus on the events of the GIANT AUCTION on Sunday March 24th, 2013. To see images and information relating to the Friday and Saturday activity see our previous two blog entries.

Friday night preparations
Saturday speakers and vendors

As has become the tradition in the past few years, Peter was hard at work late into the evening and again early in the morning dealing with the registration of a varied collection of items from gravel to driftwood to full sized aquariums and fish with unpronounceable Latin names. Other members and volunteers had already done all of the hard work of setting up the tables and chairs before I arrived – I was certainly happy to see that :-).

The number of auction attendees appeared to be higher this year and the space available in this year’s venue was a bit more cramped, so it wasn’t long before the available chairs were full of folks eager to get the bidding started. The start of the auction was moved forward to 11AM this year and that meant that folks could get to go home a bit earlier at the end of the day. I even made it home in time for supper with my family :-).

 

Despite the focus on auctionning off all of the 1000 items in this year’s auction, I, and the other raffle ticket sellers, were able to sell our share of winning tickets. 🙂 Some years it has seemed like all of the big prizes have been won by members of Montreal’s S.A.M. club, but this year a few of the OVAS members were happy that they had purchased their raffle tickets. Whether it was a gift certificate, an aquascaped tank or just 🙂 an empty 75 gallon aquarium, the winners were all smiles.  Andre, the shark, even got dressed up for his role of auctioneer and prize presenter although I think that he would have liked to have won a prize, too!

 

Alas, Andre only got to hold the prizes for a short period of time and then he had to give them away!!!

I had my eye on the nanotank until I realized that I hadn’t bought a ticket!!!

This year everything was over by about 6PM and, after tallying up what each each of the sellers would be getting, even Peter was able to turn off his computer.

HOPE TO SEE YOU ALL AGAIN NEXT YEAR!!! (or sooner)

Visit the OVAS website for information about their monthly meetings. (OVAS website)

The next big aquarium auction close to Ottawa is the Montreal S.A.M club Super Encan on April 28th, 2013.  Perhaps, I’ll be able to get to that one too. (S.A.M. website)