Auction excitement - L'excitation des encheres

Auctions = excitement. In fact I'm writing to you now from my first auction purchase. But lets come back to the beginning. For a while now my parents have been big fans of a particular auction house in Sydney. They regularly spend a Friday afternoon bidding for furniture which they then proceed to give to their children. To be honest I didn't understand the attraction until today.
As I am currently in between jobs (it will all change next week!) I decided to visit the auction house with my mum to check out what all the fuss is about. It turned out to be my lucky day. A stock of electronics goods had arrived from a well known retailer. Apparently they had a small drainage problem in their warehouse and a lot of boxes had been water damaged and were now unsellable. I started looking through the stock and to my surprise there were some excellent electronics in perfect condition. They pack these things in so much padding and plastic these days that you need more than a little water to ruin them. Anyway, I put the date for the auction in my diary and went on my way - but not before noting some model numbers check.
By the time the auction date came around I had checked my selected items on the internet and noted their regular prices. I was determined not to pay more than a third of regular retail price.
There seems to be something that makes people lose their calm rational reasoning during auctions and I didn't want to fall into the trap of paying more at auction than in a retail store. We turned up at the auction house and I eagerly filled in my registration and picked up my numbered bidder card!It's about now that the heart starts pumping. You look around you and see others looking at the items that you feel are almost yours and you get a little pang of jealousy. "What do they think they are looking at. That's mine" you say to yourself. I had a list of about 7 lots that interested me but as the auction started I had the feeling that I wouldn't be able to get everything I was looking for. I was right... everything goes pretty fast with these things and I was lucky if I even got one bid in before the lot went past my limit. Three lots in and I had missed out on the lcd televisions, four more lots to miss out on all the laptops and another two to miss out on the Playstation 3's. I was about ready to give up but I had one last lot - an HP computer. By this time a lot of the crowd had gone away happy with their wins and as the auctioneer started bidding I thought I might have a chance. "Can I get a starting bid" he called. I quickly indicated my willingness to part with $200 dollars to get the ball rolling. "$225, $250, $275" all came and went and I thought "here we go again...". I raised my hand to bid $300 - my limit was $400 so I still had little way to go. To my great surprise and pleasure - everyone started to turn away. No one was interested in the soon to be mine computer. Quicker than you can say "once, twice, sold" (or about that quick) I was the proud new owner of a brand new computer in a slightly water damaged box. I paid up and took my new win out to the car to make sure I hadn't bought a dud and was happily surprised. It turns out this computer is a top spec rocket. The fastest thing around with a quad processor and lots of flashing lights - all for a bargain price of $300.Anyway, that was ten hours ago and now it's all set up I am even happier than I was before and a confirmed auction addict. I've got to leave it there - planning for my next auction starts now!