My husband enjoys the feel of a new hammer in his hands, the grip of a well-made wrench and the engineering of his new table saw. Over the years, he has accumulated more than his share of tools.
But he still could not resist the great buy on tools that he found late last summer.
“Look at all these wire and metal cutters,” he said holding up a package of 10-15 nippers sized from very small to hefty. He maybe needed one or two tools of the 45 in the three sets.
“What are you going to do with all those tools?” I asked.
“I think they would make great Christmas gifts for the guys.”
Well yes, any family can use another wrench or two.
He really wanted to divvy them up with all of our sons present, but couldn’t. So he gave tools to one son at Thanksgiving, sent some in Christmas packages and set others aside for our after Christmas family gathering.
Before we gathered, he heard about a family which had a lot of fun distributing heirlooms using play money at a family auction.
He decided to have a tool auction. He bought play money and labeled tools for auctioning.
New Year’s Eve he handed out a bundle of cash to each guy and told the granddaughters they would take turns drawing cards to choose which tool was auctioned. When he mentioned that he did feel like an auctioneer, our son-in-love began rattling off auction talk. “I’ve always thought being an auctioneer would be fun,” he said.
He took over selling of the family tools.
A granddaughter drew a letter and picked up the matching tool. My husband lovingly described the right handed circle metal cutting tool.
“All right what we have here is a right-cutting tool. This one cuts to the right and not to the left, we want to stay to the right and not too far to the left,” our auctioneer chattered. “So do I hear $5 for a tool that leans to the right?”
A hand went up.
“Do I hear $10 for a right handed metal cutter?”
The bid crept up a dollar or two at a time until the auctioneer saw no more bids and began the countdown, “Going once, going twice, sold to the blue and purple man” he indicated the oldest son.
For the next hour he sold tools not only to the blue and purple man, but to the Family Pack – the son whose three daughters sat around him and urged him to bid on everything and yelled out bids when he didn’t.
Because he was auctioning, he told my daughter, “pretty, little lady” to pay attention, he would wink and nod when a tool came up that he particularly wanted. Sometimes he had to wink and nod very emphatically.
As the bidding wound down on some of the tools, his brother “Wild Hog” would suddenly raise his hand or up the ante another $5 or $20 just for the fun of watching everyone squirm.
Sometimes a bidder wanted the item, but did not want to go higher, so they upped the bid one cent.
The auctioneer gave them ‘the look.’
He also gave folks the look when they giggled and bid, $77.77.
He rolled his eyes, sighed, “I’m bid all those 7s, does anyone want to say $80?”
At first tools sold for low amounts of $10 to $20 in play money. Then the price edged up as bidders realized just how much cash they still had.
By the end of the hour, Bugger Pickers (so named because no one could figure out what the tool actually did) sold for $150 and Noggin Knockers (okay a crescent wrench) sold for $300.
It took about an hour to sell the assortment of 20 tools.
It was an hour of fun, laughter and slipping of money to help out siblings.
It was an hour of family bonding over a few inexpensive tools as a one-night only auctioneer made up the rules, the names and the rhyming phrases as he went along.
It was a night for collecting tools and family memories.