PORT HARDY—The first hammer drops Saturday morning as the annual Rotary Radio Auction returns to the Thunderbird Mall in Port Hardy for its 28th installment.
Items are available for preview and pre-bid tomorrow night, Friday, October 31, from 4-6 p.m. across from the Lotto booth in the mall.
Over the course of the following two days Rotarians and volunteers will man the phones and the auctioneer’s table as hundreds of items go up for sale to the highest bidder.
If the mall is not on your travel plans this weekend there are still plenty of ways to get involved — and possibly scoop up a bargain just ahead of the Christmas season.
Follow along with bidding on Keta Cable channel 10 or the Coast 1240 and call 250-949-7600 to place your bid.
For the tech savvy, an online catalog of the lots is available at the Rotary’s website at www.porthardyrotary.org and the auction can also be followed on a live stream at www.theport.ca.
This year’s listing catalogue was placed in mailboxes this week and provides a comprehensive look of the items up for sale and their order.
All items in the auction have been generously donated by North Island merchants and the proceeds from their sale goes towards local Rotary projects.
This year’s items run the gamut from the opening $5 Subway gift card all the way up to big-ticket items like winter tires, weekend getaways and return flights from Port Hardy to Vancouver, valued in the thousands of dollars.
Altogether, the 440 items going under the hammer represent over $65,000 at estimated retail value.
Bidding proper opens Saturday morning at 11 a.m. and runs to 4:30 that afternoon with a repeat schedule Sunday.
Last year the event brought in more than $54,000 over the weekend, benefitting local causes including the Rotary Trail in Port McNeill and the recently unveiled Literacy Centre and Library in Fort Rupert.