Saturday night I had a ticket to a D12 Fantasy game, another game I had duplicates of. The second one was for Sunday morning and Jenn had a ticket for then too, so I was pretty sure I’d be skipping that game. Originally I was thinking of maybe running a pick-up game, but I ended up at the Charity Auction instead.
Jenn always catches the auction, but I had never been. Too busy playing games I guess. But this year I really wanted to get my hands on some old out of print stuff, and the dealer’s hall just wasn’t cutting it. So I went to the auction to see if it had anything better. Turns out, it was a gold mine. I only wish I was there for the official roleplaying portion.
My first visit they were auctioning mostly board games I think. I got in line at the auction store while I watched. Apparently the auction store has stuff that either didn’t get sold during the regular auction, or some stuff that’s put there intentionally. Most of it has a rolling price depending on what day it is — the longer it sits in the store the cheaper it gets. I was really hoping to get my hands on a 1st edition PHB, one with the excellent Trampier artwork. I even saw several people exiting the store with such books in hand. Unfortunately, by the time I got in there it was all Monster Manuals and Fiend Folios left. Sigh.
I did find a copy of the Moldvay expert book, which I already have two of, but at $1 it just seemed too good to pass up. How can I have too many copies of these books anyway? Maybe some day I’ll drop the LL pretext and just switch back to B/X full time.
There were a fair number of old modules to be found. I picked up a copy of I1, for no other reason than it was the most appealing looking one to read. I didn’t notice at the time, but apparently the thing is still in its original shrink wrap. Yikes! Now I face the moral dilemma of whether to tear off the shrink to read it or leave it as a collector’s item. I admit I have a slight collection bug, but it seems crazy to me to buy something solely for collect-ability, especially a book that yearns to be read.
I decided to come back again later, and even though the schedule indicated that all the roleplay stuff would be done in the mornings and they were supposed to be on to TOVA, they were still doing a few roleplay items. I figured what the heck, and bought myself a bidding card (it was only $1). I bid on a few items and usually got out-bid. At one point an item came up for two of the four sets of AD&D monster cards. I had some of these back in the day, but they were long gone. I was outbid, but the next item up was a complete set of all four, though in lesser condition. I bid and actually won at $9.50. I was totally psyched, the one thing I actually won a bid on was something I really did want, it wasn’t just about the excitement of bidding, and for a pretty good price I think.
By the night time it was on to the charity auction, which I watched with Jenn and Bigfella. I bid once or twice, but it always went well above my range. I took a good amount of footage of this, but I won’t bore you with it. The one thing I will share is a quick clip of a bid on some World of Warcraft cards. Apparently they included a still usable code that would get you a pretty sought-after mount in game. They had three cards, and the bids were given per-card. The winner had the option of buying as many of the cards at the winning bid as he wanted. Presumably they’d give runners-up the chance at the left-overs, but the winner actually opted to buy all 3 cards. Here’s the video:
The auction was a real highlight this year. Next year I’m definitely going to try and make a bigger effort to be there for it, especially during the roleplay items. I’ll get my first printing PHB yet!
