I Bought A Piano!

Geoff is forever dragging me to auctions and this past one was no exception.  This time I had company, mom and dad were in town and they were along for the ride with me as well.  Lincoln Public Schools holds their auctions twice a year.  When we went in the fall, I really enjoyed myself.  It goes by pretty fast and there are lots of items that I am interested in actually bidding on.  For this auction, the preview mentioned Musical Instruments: tuba, violin, trombone and piano.  This definitely caught my eye!

Once I discovered the Piano at the auction, I was immediately interested.  I was surprised at how good of condition it was in; of course it was in need of a good tune and some TLC.  I wanted it!  We stuck around to see how much the piano was actually going to go for.  The auctioneer started the bids at $100.  You could hear a pin drop.  The 20 or so people standing around probably had the same idea we did.  Finally someone bid $10.  Geoff kept looking at me with "Do you want me to bid?" eyes and I kept looking at him with "I really want it" eyes, so Geoff jumped in with $12.50! No more did Geoff bid that the auctioneer was saying, "Going going gone! For $12.50!" 

At first I was thrilled!  Woo hoo!  I bought a Piano!! But shortly after, my thoughts soon turned to where in the heck are we going to put this thing? How are we going to move it? (we own a Blazer and a Grand Am, my parents were here in the "Flea" aka Hyundai Accent)  I have never felt buyers remorse quite like this one.  I was literally sick to my stomach!  Here I was so excited to actually win a bid that I really wanted and it just wasn't going to work out. Plus I already own a piano! It just isn't here in Lincoln with me.  We are going to move it from my parents house until we are in a more permanent place. 

Luckily Geoff's boss, Bryce, was also at the auction with his truck.  The funny thing is that he was the one who bid $10.  We out bid him! So he volunteered to take the piano and store it in his garage.  We decided to put the piano up on Craig's list and try and make a profit and split it between us and Bryce.  (Like it will be hard! We ended up paying $13 and change with taxes put in.)  

Buying this piano also allowed me to bless a family in an unexpected way.  After we won the bid, this lady approached me almost in tears.  She asked if I had bought the piano and I said, "Yes, do you want it? You can have it!"  All she wanted was the tuning tag.  It belonged to her father who was a piano tuner.  Helping make this family's day really helped my buyers remorse.

$12.50 ended up buying us a piano that nobody wants. (Its currently August 6 and no one has been interested.  We have even offered to donate it for free to several places.  But $12.50 did buy me quite the story! 

The moral of the story, remember to spay and nuder your pianos to keep homeless pianos off the street.