The_Piratess
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Silver Bars - My First, Best and Worst Auction
Years ago when I went to my very first auction ever I bought a huge, old, solid oak desk for $1.00 along with many other, really nice, pieces of antique furniture and antiques. It was at an amazing home that was built in the late 1800's in an historical area that a park with an old, grist mill had purchased to include with the park. Things went for so cheap that it was the best one that I've ever been to even all of these years later. After buying all of my things, I needed another vehicle to get everything home. So finally when my ex-husband arrived in his truck after getting off work and almost everyone was gone, I let him load it as all there was left was that huge desk which I had bought for him anyway because he had always wanted one like that and a few other things that didn't have to be loaded cautiously. He pulled the drawers out and carried those first to lighten the weight of that desk. As I was walking back to the room where the desk was I heard this extremely loud clanging of metal and my ex and a couple of men from the auction were carrying out heavy bars of solid silver. When they had flipped that huge, old desk over to get it out of the door the bars started falling out from the back of that desk slipping out of the steel bar that had been bolted to the inside of it to hold them in place. They were giving them back to the owners of the house who they were friends with. There ended up being 10 of those silver bars hidden in the back of that old desk! I was mad at myself for not going back there in the beginning because I had heard the bottom drawer clanking shut when I bought it. I just thought that the rails needed work. I would have noticed them being in there as the drawers were being pulled out because I would have been checking those rails out. I would have loaded them right into the drawers, carried them out and not said a word to anybody. I didn't think that it would have been wrong because I now owned it.
Several years later I started going to auctions again and I told some people that story. They of course then told me what that auction company had done was totally illegal and unethical. Once you win the bid, anything inside seen or unseen is yours and I had already paid for everything. If you bid and don't pay for your items, they can and will prosecute you. I was furious, and just got sick all over about it again!!!
Do NOT ever let something like this happen to you as you'll be kicking yourself just like I still do to this very day!
Years ago when I went to my very first auction ever I bought a huge, old, solid oak desk for $1.00 along with many other, really nice, pieces of antique furniture and antiques. It was at an amazing home that was built in the late 1800's in an historical area that a park with an old, grist mill had purchased to include with the park. Things went for so cheap that it was the best one that I've ever been to even all of these years later. After buying all of my things, I needed another vehicle to get everything home. So finally when my ex-husband arrived in his truck after getting off work and almost everyone was gone, I let him load it as all there was left was that huge desk which I had bought for him anyway because he had always wanted one like that and a few other things that didn't have to be loaded cautiously. He pulled the drawers out and carried those first to lighten the weight of that desk. As I was walking back to the room where the desk was I heard this extremely loud clanging of metal and my ex and a couple of men from the auction were carrying out heavy bars of solid silver. When they had flipped that huge, old desk over to get it out of the door the bars started falling out from the back of that desk slipping out of the steel bar that had been bolted to the inside of it to hold them in place. They were giving them back to the owners of the house who they were friends with. There ended up being 10 of those silver bars hidden in the back of that old desk! I was mad at myself for not going back there in the beginning because I had heard the bottom drawer clanking shut when I bought it. I just thought that the rails needed work. I would have noticed them being in there as the drawers were being pulled out because I would have been checking those rails out. I would have loaded them right into the drawers, carried them out and not said a word to anybody. I didn't think that it would have been wrong because I now owned it.
Several years later I started going to auctions again and I told some people that story. They of course then told me what that auction company had done was totally illegal and unethical. Once you win the bid, anything inside seen or unseen is yours and I had already paid for everything. If you bid and don't pay for your items, they can and will prosecute you. I was furious, and just got sick all over about it again!!!
Do NOT ever let something like this happen to you as you'll be kicking yourself just like I still do to this very day!
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auction company and had their licenses revoked but by the time I found out that it was against the law, it was already past the statute of limitations... 
