This year's auction was to benefit Operation Smile, and more than $6,000 was raised. It was held on the first official day of the Cirque du Cyclisme, Friday June 9th, 2006. John Pergolizzi was the head auctioneer, and he was ably assisted by Harvey Sachs and Mike Schmidt (if I have omitted other members of the auction team, my apologies, please let me know). This year the auction was held in a very large space behind Cycles de Oro, which provided a great venue for the auction, and was very well attended.
That's Harvey in the "yellow jersey," and John holding the first of three bottles of Masi wine, donated by Cycles de Oro customers, including my Battleground roomie and all-around great guy Tom Sanders, at 100% (i.e., all the proceeds went to the charity).
The first bottle was purchased by John "Maddog" Waner for $35, and the the next two went for successively higher prices - apparently the lure of "uncorking a Masi" was in full swing.
Forks, get your forks right here! John and Harvey worked great in tandem (pun intended!).
As you can see in this pic, John is blurry while Harvey is not. The reason is John's non-stop action/movement. You have to see John in action to understand the meaning of the word "dynamo."
This is the beautiful Erikson bike that unfortunately did not meet reserve. I guess there weren't enough tall guys bidding.
Jamie Swan was also helping out.
John deftly juggled three wheels to the delight of all, but I wasn't quick enough with the camera to catch him with all three (just kidding, he only juggled two wheels).
One of the rare moments when both John and Harvey were relatively static.
John Barron won this very nice Bob Jackson track iron.
Here John is hefting Joe Bender-Zanoni's full-panto Guerciotti while Joe takes over the mike. Listmeister hisself Dale Brown bought this bike - Guerciotti's did well at Cirque this year! :)
At one point during the auction, John fielded a surprise call from painter extraordinaire Joe Bell, who donated a full paint job with decals! Not surprisingly, it achieved a very nice result after an exciting bidding war between several people.
And here is John holding up Mike Kone's Gillot frameset (that's Mike on the left, who had a table-full of auction items).
John went into the bleachers if necessary! Here he is holding a Urago.
This double-magnum of wine was donated by Dale Brown. Dale also donated other items, including another bottle of very fine French wine which did very well.
Mike Schmidt worked diligently to keep the auction running smooth, which was not easy due to the VERY LARGE number of items being auctioned.
These were NAHBS posters which John had several of the premier builders autograph, way back when, in anticipation of this auction. Talk about making things happen!
Flanked by owner Joe B-Z and John, this very nice early and original California Masi GC did not meet a very reasonable reserve - I guess we all have enough Masi's?
Joe B-Z's unsold Masi: Look for it on eBay, where it will certainly go for more than the reserve it had at the auction.
John was loathe to let anything special go unsold - here he shows an early Confente brochure which, in the absence of sufficient bids, he bought for the reserve amount.
And here Harvey holds the only item I was able to win, a brand-spankin-new Unicanitor saddle owned by Mike Kone. After a mano-a-mano with Ralph from Via Cycles, I won this saddle for $105, of which Mike donated $25 to Operation Smile. (I don't know who ended up donating the most to Operation Smile, but I know Mike Kone's contribution was significant - not only did he have several items (a table full actually), but at one point he met and beat his own reserve on something just so it wouldn't go too cheap.)
This was my first Cirque, and therefore my first auction. I can only say that John's award as Volunteer of the Year is well deserved for having instituted and successfully conducted this ongoing and highly-anticipated annual event - which is particularly impressive when you consider that he is such a soft-spoken and shy person. I believe this was the most successful auction yet - congratulations to all involved.
