Hang with me on this post…there is a life application by the time I get to the end.

Anyone who reads this blog knows that I spend a fair amount of my free time buying items at auction and flipping them.  My ‘flipping’ has a purpose and I have been working to refine how and what I buy to maximize the profitability of my time.  The biggest scores I’ve had have nothing to do with my thinking and strategy.

An example… Last week I was at a local office furniture auction trying to pick up some items for our church.  The auction was a few minutes from my office so I was popping in and out all day while trying to get some work done too.  There were over a thousand items up for auction so it was going to be an all day event.

Around 2pm I returned to the auction to bid on some dry erase boards for renovations at our church building.  I had spotted some high-end ceramic dry erase boards that were 4×8 and perfect for our needs.  The auction was getting slow and the auctioneer bundled a group of 6 boards together.  I thought, “I’m going to lose because I am a little fish in an ocean of sharks.”  Many bidders come from out of state to buy for their businesses and they can be ruthless.

As bidding started no one jumped in on this group of boards for even $100.  I waited and held my bid to see if they’d go down to $50.  My initial guess on the value of the 6 boards was around $1,500.  Finally a bidder jumped in at $100.  I quickly followed at $125.  The auctioneer worked the bidding up to $165 and that was the end.  I won this group of boards for $165!  It was a high-five moment but I refrained.  (The thrill of live auctions can be pretty addicting.)

The next day I returned to load up the boards.  The 4×8 boards were everything I had hoped they would be.  The steel coated with ceramic was extremely heavy, just like it should be.  As we flipped over a board that had been thrown into my group I spotted an electronic box and a USB cable.  One of the boards in my group was a smart board.  Back at the building I setup the smart board and to my surprise it worked!  It was a $1,500 board that everyone (including me) had completely overlooked.  All in all the value of my $165 purchase was close to $4,000.  That was a great score for our church!

My other big auction score happened through no real effort of my own.  Early on in my auction buying I was bidding on items in a local online auction.  The auction consisted of items that had been procured from a high end Dallas hotel as they were remodeling.  It was a massive auction.  When I went to the warehouse to pickup my items I found out that one of the major buyers in the auction had failed to pay his bids and there would be a second auction for many of the items.

In the first auction I had bid on a large rendering of the American Airlines Center because I thought it was neat.  I had gone up to $7 on it but the individual who failed to pay his bids had won it for $8.  In the second auction I won the rendering for $5.   When we picked it up at the warehouse it was wired to a chain-link fence and the plexiglass in the frame had been broken.  The rendering was about 72″ x 28″.  I tossed it in the back of my pickup truck as we were loading other items.

The rendering was stored in my garage with the other items and after a few weeks I began to investigate it.  I removed the damaged frame to see if the rendering had been damaged.  It was on a 3/4″ thick foam board, had the architects information on it, and I noticed that much of the work appeared to be done by hand.  I contacted the architecture firm and they verified that this was an original rendering of the American Airlines Center that had been done by the architect who was still on staff and personally verified it.  They even said it would be worth thousands of dollars in today’s market.

My $5 purchase that I had originally lost, then bought and set aside in the garage was a unique part of history for the DFW area and sports fans.  Somewhere along the way the worth of this piece had been forgotten and it had been discarded and treated as if it were trash.  This was truly hidden treasure that was hiding in plain sight!

Here’s where these stories apply to each one of us.  Did you know that you have hidden treasure in your house?  I would imagine everyone who is reading this has at least one Bible in their home.  It is often neglected, forgotten, and undervalued.  In the Bible we find information and instruction that leads to treasure that no amount of money can buy.  Making a big score at an auction is cool but finding treasure that lasts eternally is amazing!  I hope you spend some time ‘hunting for treasure’ in God’s word today!

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