For the second time in the past few years our wee doctor friends Mark and Trudie invited us to attend the St. David's School fundraiser gala. Our daughter went there in her early years, then both their kids did, and now Trudie is on the board, so she's got enough juice to get us an invite. The gala is a swanky event where the well-meaning folks at St. David's find all the wealthy people they can get, get them liquored up, and then invite them to bid on items at auction. There are two groups of attendees: those with Serious Money, and the rest of us who hide under the table when the auctioneer is scanning the room for a bid of $5000 for a custom prepared dinner by Chef Trendy McHighBrow.
I'm sure many scholars have analyzed the motivations and hidden agendas of wealthy people, men in particular, bidding large sums of money at public charity auctions. This is no such scholarly paper. I will merely attempt to document my motivations and competitive glee while bidding on a few items during the silent auction.
Since I knew from our prior experience that we would be sitting out the live auction -- which is for high rollers only -- we were most interested in the silent auction. The twist this year was the electronic tool provided to facilitate bidding. An iPod with a customized app, using wireless networking set up just for the event, was handed to each couple upon entry. This app, called BidPal but more accurately described as BidJacker, allowed people to look up the current bids of items, place a bid, and view a list of all items personally bid on. The killer feature of the app was the notification when someone else outbid you for an item. This outbid feature knows how to stir the competitive juices. Outbid me? Ooooh, I'll show you...
The outbid feature, henceforth known as The OF, surely was responsible for as much wild price speculation as the free wine being proffered at every turn. But at this point I was still unaware of The OF as we entered the areas where the silent auction items were on display. There were autographed sporting goods, offers for photography sittings, a couple of XBoxes, an iPad, deals for numerous restaurants, concert tickets, and even an offer to have a tree guru come to your house and assess the state of your foliage. And my foliage could use some assessment, considering we currently have a tree pitched at a 45 degree angle. All kinds of interesting stuff was available. Items could be had for as little as $50 but some could run up close to $1000. Not Serious Money, but enough where us normal folks can't cover it with the float in our joint checking accounts. "Honey, we're not going to Olive Garden this month."
Since Mark and Trudie had essentially paid for our seats at the dinner table we felt like we should put in a few bids. After passing over the John Randle-autographed Hall of Fame helmet, an iPad (version 1 -- that's sooo 2010), and an offer for free Invisalign orthodontics, we stumbled across a display for 2 front-row tickets to see the Irish alt./pop rock band The Script.
Hmmmm. Karen REALLY likes The Script. I am ambivalent about The Script (their level of rocking is generally insufficient for me), but I'm not ambivalent about Karen, so I thought this would be a good one to take a run at. It was early in the silent auction and the current bid hadn't even cracked $100 yet. I boldly put in a bid of $85 (basically a tank of gas, I rationalized) and moved on to other items. We put in some half-hearted bids on a Chipotle dinner and a Fogo De Chao Brazilian restaurant gift card. I threw a token bid on the tree guru and an in-house interior decorating consultation.
And then The OF made it's presence known. I looked down at BidPal and it was telling me I'd been outbid. Outbid! How cheeky! The unmitigated gall of someone to surpass me! And it seemed so personal to have this little device tell me to my face that I was no longer in first place. Because that's how this evolved in my mind: this was a game.
There is no way to know who specifically is bidding. The silent auction was spread over several hallways of one floor of an open-plan office building so even looking around I could only 30 or so guests out of the few hundred in attendance. I furrowed my brow and stared holes in a few suit-clad potential perpetrators but I could glean no guilt. It was to be a silent, face-less battle, much like for opposing submarine commanders.
How was I to respond to this effrontery of being outbid? This impingement on my masculinity? Well, I was going to give him some of his own medicine. My foe could easily have been a woman but in my mind it was another guy. Probably a guy in a better suit, with cash hanging out of his pockets and a second home in Vail. If so, then I was toast. But if it was somebody with my middling wherewithal, then game on.
The minimum overbid was $5 but that just seemed lame. Let's not dabble in half-measures, people. I jumped up $20. I put the iPod down with the feeling that I had just lobbed an electronic grenade at some poor sap.
I checked the bidding in a few minutes and realized I'd been outbid. Although this was now expected, nonetheless a frisson of annoyance skittered down my spine. I re-bid. But in the few seconds I was pushing buttons someone else had overbid. I needed to bid even higher. Things were escalating.
We were now into the low hundreds for these tickets. We weren't really sure how much we wanted to spend on The Script. Karen clearly wanted to go but wasn't sure it was worth it. She wasn't sure how much *I* was willing to spend. I wasn't sure either but I still wanted to play the game. In my mind I was now equating this to the traditional male role of hunting and gathering. I'm not going to shoot an elk in downtown Minneapolis but I can sure as hell bag a pair of concert tickets. Re-bid.
I was enjoying the assumed knowledge that one or two other bidders were being routinely irked by getting OF'ed. Based on the pattern of bidding I could tell there were at least 2 other bidders. I didn't always instantly rebid after being notified by The OF. Sometimes I'd wait a while, letting a sense of complacency set in, letting the tension build, and then I'd jack it up. Shazam! Or, "another notch!" as Emeril would say.
The silent auction ended at 7:20 and the remaining time was ticking down like a bomb in BitPal. With about 10 minutes left it was time to plan for the End Game. We were now over $500 for these damn tickets. Did I really want to win them, or was I satisfied with simply stirring the pot? I decided I was comfortable spending a little more on these, that front row tickets would be pretty cool, and that I wanted to give it a shot. Huntin' and gatherin.'
I've only been involved in one eBay auction. A few years ago I put a bid on a corny Christmas jigsaw puzzle that my family used to put together when I was a kid. It was lost to the ages and various family dogs eating the puzzle pieces so I thought it would be cool to have it again. I put in a top bid and didn't pay attention during the last minute of bidding. Some bozo swept in at the end and overbid me by $1. C'mon, man! I would have paid double what I bid. A humbling defeat, but it laid the foundation for my end game strategy on this night.
I forsook the bidding on the interior decorator and the restaurant offers. No one seemed to be challenging my bid on the tree savant so I let that ride. We were now down to one minute left. The bid was at $715. My plan was to make a bid in the last 5 seconds, but to make sure it was high enough in case my rival did the same thing. His overbids were often in the $5-$10 range. I figured a big leap in the final seconds would be enough. I entered $750 and pushed Submit Bid with 4 seconds to go...
It was enough. $750 held up. I was filled with a sense of satisfaction disproportionate to the value of the victory. I was quite full of myself. I'll never know if the other bidder made a final too-low overbid on himself as insurance but I prefer to imagine that he did, cursing the ceiling as he became aware of being thwarted. In fact, I'll never know who that person was. Maybe it was Vikings owner Zygi Wilf, who was rattling around the event. Maybe it was crusty sports columnist and name-dropper Sid Hartman, a big supporter of St. David's. Maybe it was some hedge fund jockey who indirectly contributed to the lowering of my 401k a couple years ago. One can only hope...
$750 for tickets to a little known band? I can always pull out the "it was for a good cause" justification. $750 just to win a little personal contest seems a bit much. It definitely made the missus happy, and we all know THAT'S priceless. Plus, I got the tree guy coming over...
