Charles City Rotary Auction sets record bids total

By Bob Steenson, bsteenson@charlescitypress.com
The Charles City Rotary Club set a record for its annual Radio Auction Saturday morning, Feb. 1, raising $8,774.
That’s more than $1,000 more than the previous record set two years ago, said Rotary member Tammy Elthon, who has been helping organize the auction since it began in 2010.
More than 100 items were auctioned off live on radio station KCHA Saturday, with Rotary members helping with on-air duties and staffing phone lines.
Proceeds this year are being split with the Floyd County Museum, in the club’s fourth year of working with a community partner on the auction.
The highest bid received was for a Green Bay Packer preseason football game “experience,” valued at $270, that sold for a winning bid of $550.
The total value of donated items was more than $9,000, so while some people bid more than items were worth to help raise funds for the club, others bidders came away with bargains.
Two items – a hand-made wooden mystery music box filled with gift cards, cash, lottery tickets and some foreign currency, and an Oliver model toy tractor – started bidding wars, Elthon said. The music box valued at $100 eventually sold for $226, and the model tractor valued at $125 sold for $260.
One bit of confusion occurred when three people identifying themselves as “Diane S” started bidding on three different items at the same time.
Elthon said she thought, “This doesn’t look right, because I was getting different phone numbers. Well, then it got real fast and furious. I was just getting ‘Diane’ as it was coming across. And I thought, oh, this isn’t going to end well.”
But eventually it got sorted out and everyone is OK with it now, she said.
“I never had that happen in all the years,” Elthon said.
Since it began, the Rotary Radio Auction has raised a total of $95,334 that has been returned to the community through Rotary projects and scholarships, and for the last four years split with other community groups.

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