Date: 8/31/26 8:37 pm From: John Cecil <jcecil01...> Subject: [ia-bird] Silent Auction for Fall Meeting Announcement
Hello everyone,
Ann Johnson had reached out to me before her passing wishing to donate a large collection of bird figurines she had accumulated over the years for auction at a future IOU meeting. Her family has passed these items on to me as per her wishes. There are too many to put into one auction so I will host another silent auction at another future meeting as well.
My father and I have hosted silent auctions of donated books and other birding memorabilia at our meetings in years past. So AJ she had asked me to take this on and I of course was happy to do so. I am going to open the auction up for additional donations from members as well. The money collected will go to support our publications costs for the Iowa Bird Life.
I know that the silent auction was something people enjoyed in past meetings so it was with some reservation I stopped doing it. One of the reasons was that I ended up with carloads of leftover books to haul back and forth between meetings.
I am excited to be offering this again for the meeting. You are welcome to bring some nature and ecology related items to donate. However, I would ask a few things.
- Please do not bring magazine collections. They will not sell and will end up being leftover trash to be dealt with. - If your books or items do not sell, please be willing to take them back with you. - Please bring books that you think will sell and people will have some interest in. (In years past we would haul around hundreds of books that would not sell for 3-4 meetings. I want to avoid this if possible) - Local birding pamphlets and old checklists just end up taking up space. Please leave them home - Old cassette tapes, vinyl records and VHS videos will end up being trash. no one buys them. - Binoculars, birding gear, and other non-literature items are welcome. Just please don't bring any figurines this time as we will have a lot of them already. -If you have a large collection of books you want to unload at the auction I kindly ask that you dont bring them all and select a number of books to bring. I don't have the space in my home to store them until the next meeting.
The auction will be set up over the lunch hour on Saturday and will be completed at an announced time following the banquet dinner and presentation.
I look forward to seeing all of you in a couple of weekends.
