Annual consignment sale draws large crowd

By Tay­lor Kaser -

Despite dreary weather, the Mor­row County Fair­grounds was a hub of activ­ity dur­ing the annual farm equip­ment con­sign­ment sale on Feb­ru­ary 23.

Always held on the last week­end of Feb­ru­ary, auc­tion­eer Bill Creswell said that this is the sale’s 32nd year being held at the fair­grounds. Creswell co-organizes the sale with fel­low auc­tion­eer Dwain Peak, who first started the auc­tion day, Creswell joined 30 years ago.

The sale sprawls across the entire fair­grounds with hun­dreds of pieces of equip­ment and other farm related mate­ri­als, includ­ing light con­struc­tion materials.Everything farm related can be found, from trac­tors and large machin­ery to shov­els and small tools.

A sim­i­lar sale is hosted by the Mor­row County Antique Trac­tor Trac­tor & Equip­ment Asso­ci­a­tion, is held in August at the fairgrounds.

Creswell said that when it first began, the sale was one of the few of its kind held in Ohio, now they’re much more com­mon. Buy­ers and sell­ers come from all around, even from out of state. He noted that about half of the items up for bid were from Mor­row County.

About 3,500 bid num­bers were assigned, plus oth­ers that came with bid­ders. Ten auc­tion­eers worked six at a time through­out the fair­grounds auc­tion­ing var­i­ous items. A clerk stays with the auc­tion­eer and records the num­ber of the item auc­tioned, who won the item, and for what price. Buy­ers can then pay after the infor­ma­tion has been relayed back to the record­ing office at the fairgrounds.

A lot of effort goes into oper­at­ing the giant sale, explained Creswell. Between 20–30 fam­ily mem­bers and friends helped. He also expressed his appre­ci­a­tion to the county offi­cials and law enforce­ment that help.

“With­out peo­ple to help us, we couldn’t do it,” said Creswell, “We have to call in a lot of favors, but we have a lot of fun doing it.”

Posted by Taylor Kaser on Mar 6 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.