“What A Buy!”

Years ago when we lived in Houston, we owned some rental properties. Some furnished appliances needed replacing and I had been searching around for the least expensive I could find. It turned out that Western Auto was the answer. I had shopped their store and had picked out the range and refrigerator that I was going to buy. I planned to pick them up first thing Saturday morning. Saturday morning arrived and as I enjoyed my espresso coffee, I checked out the want adds to see if I could maybe find some better deals. To my surprise, there was a large ad that announced , “ Appliance scratch and dent auction for Western Auto”. Wow! , I thought, lucky me that I checked out the want adds. The auction was taking place near our apartments so it would be very convenient and I could save some money to. There was a big crowd at the auction and there we hundreds off appliances there to be auctioned. I signed up and got my bidding tag and went to see if they had the same models I had picked out at the store. They had at least ten of both. Some looked like they had been dropped off a two story building and others had just small corner dents. I wrote down the item numbers and waited for the auction to begin. They started with refrigerators and the one I was interested in was about the tenth. I started the bidding far below the store price and the auctioneer took my bid. Immediately others started bidding and the frige sold for seventy-five dollars more than the in store new price. I bid on the second and the same thing happened. Each time a bidder “won”a bid the auctioneer said loudly, “What a buy!”. I stepped back from the crowd and quickly saw that two guys in the group were bidding everything up. I left, and went to the store and purchased the frige and range new. This morning , as we were returning to our apartment from the beach, I heard a voice on a loudspeaker selling something. On the edge of the roundabout next to our apartment was a guy with a van packed with new pillows. Big signs all over the van said “5 euros”.. The price stamped on the pillows was 59.90 euros. Wow! Thats about a 90% discount. “What a buy!”