Over The Weekend

Last night, Anita and I went to the Maverix Studios charity art auction, benefitting the Alzheimer's Association. There were plenty of prints, sculptures and drawings to bid on, many of them done by friends, all of them cool!

Most of the evening was socializing and silent bidding. I hadn't done this type of auction before - everyone gets a bidding number, and you jot it down (along with the amount you want to bid) on a slip of paper posted next to the piece. Then, you wander around the party, checking periodically to see if anyone jotted down a higher bid. If so, you jot down a higher one and keep jotting and checking until the auction time runs out!

There was a little extra twist - several of the most hotly contested pieces were then put up for live bidding - the final silent bid then becomes the starting one for the live auction! Oof.

I wasn't in a party mood initially, so the first half of the auction was a little rough. The two of us bid on three different pieces, and we stuck around, knowing that if we took off early, we'd probably lose all of them (and that was true). My eBay personality kicked in, and the mixing got easier as more people arrived.

We decided to focus on a great Catwoman drawing by Ted Mathot, a nifty illuminated Tron - like sculpture by Tony Candaleria, and another item that I can't list here (we bought it as an early Christmas gift, and you never know who's reading). We bidded and hovered and chatted. Anita kindly offered to sell tickets for the raffle items, and we kept an eye on the clock.

The evening definitely picked up as the live auction began - Anita helped present the most hotly contested pieces, and the bidding kicked into high gear! It was very entertaining to watch folks grit their teeth, bidding higher and higher. The live auction was clearly a good call, as almost every one of the last pieces went for far more than they had during the silent phase. People had gotten used to thinking they'd won in the first half (what I call "the eBay effect"), so now they really weren't letting go without a fight! Fortunately for the charity, they didn't, and literally thousands of dollars changed hands at cash-out time.

Oddly, none of our personally coveted pieces 'went live', so we got off light at cash-out time - our bill was a little under three hundred dollars for everything that we won (all three pieces, as it turned out). Of course, it went to a good cause, too!

I donated a beaver toy, but not surprisingly, it didn't cause nearly as much of a stir as the original pieces. Next time I'll try to whip up an original drawing - those certainly did the trick!

---------------------------------------------------------

Today, Anita and I went up to Napa - there was one of those temporary outlet stores there, and this one specialized in Disney theme park overstock. We didn't really have money to throw around after the auction, but you never know what kind of bargain might surface. We jumped in the hybrid and went to check it out.

It was a bizarre section of Napa, one that I didn't even know exisited. Rather than rows of neatly manicured wineries, this area had strip malls, fast-food joints, gated communities and industrial parks. I felt like I'd somehow teleported down to Valencia or Burbank!

There really wasn't anything there that we wanted, so we grabbed a quick lunch and started on our way back home. That's kind of how collecting works - you have to lose on a lot of long shots before your horse comes in. You just have to hit the stores like a metronome, and sooner or later, you'll find that thing you've been looking for. This, though, was not one of those times.

There was a flea market in its last throes on the way home, so we checked that out, too. It was mostly brand new stuff, but for whatever reason, there was a lot of bootleg toys there - more than I'd ever seen anywhere else. Most were Ninja Turtle/Voltron/superhero variations, but also plenty of Nemo/Incredibles/Cars rip-offs. They weren't hilariously ugly, but I did find a few choice mutations that I picked up and will try to shoot next weekend at the latest. Four words until then: raptor with a saddle.

Toy OTD: Chicken Little Bootleg Figure: Foxy Loxy

There's a small mall near my house that sells some Japanese toys - every once in a while, I stop by and see if there's anything new. I've picked up some of my Moomin toys there, among other things.

More recently, I discovered that one of the smaller shops sells (what I would assume to be Chinese) bootleg toys. I love bootlegs, but it's hard to find a place that sells them. The stock in this tiny store doesn't change all that often, but it does make for some interesting discoveries!

At the end of last year, I found a four-pack of bootleg Chicken Little figures. The other characters looked pretty awful (I know, isn't that the point?), but this Foxy Loxy was actually pretty good. I liked the character design in the film, but there wasn't a licensed toy of it that I liked, so I kept this one and discarded the others (they weren't ugly enough to be interesting).

I think the four-pack cost me about $6.00, but I think the store's out of them now, and I can't imagine anyone being able to find these again, even on eBay. But that's kind of the way of bootlegs in general - they make money while they can, then disappear.