The Vancouver auction did not sell and has been relisted on ebay at a lower starting price.
Vermont was hit surprisingly hard by Hurricane Irene. The hurricane didn’t cause much direct damage, but the flooding was shocking. The area I live in had two of its major shopping plazas flood, wrecking many stores and putting 500 – 600 people out of work for months while the stores are cleaned and rebuilt. And that’s small compared to the towns which were completely isolated as roads to them were destroyed by the waters, bridges which were washed out and farms which were flooded and completely lost their crops.
When I ran across the Kickstarter campaign for Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer’s west coast tour, I had the idea to buy the 5 show package and put tickets for 4 of the shows up for auction (yes, I am keeping the Portland tickets). I checked to make sure that would be okay and received permission. I am not a scalper – Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer are aware of this effort and have given their permission for me to use the tickets this way.
I’m gambling that the amount of money I can make from the auctions will be greater than the cost of the tickets. I’m donating 100% of the money the auctions bring in, but in the event that they bring in less than the value of the tickets it would have been better for me to just donate the money to the causes I want to support.
I considered running the auctions myself but decided that the best outcome would most likely be from listing them on ebay: people are used to using it, trust it, I have a good reputation on it, and I wouldn’t be able to screw up the auctions by not handling things in a timely manner.
Here are the auctions:
Monday October 31st – Los Angeles, CA at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre
Friday November 4th – San Francisco, CA at the Palace of Fine Arts
Sunday November 6th – Vancouver, BC at the Vogue Theatre
Wednesday November 9th – Seattle, WA at the Moore Theatre
These auctions are for admission for two for the “VIP” experience, which gets you admission to the soundcheck and meet & greet with Neil and Amanda, the best VIP seats in the house, and some special schwag which I am told is not finalized yet but will be sent to you. These packages went for $500 each on Kickstarter, and I am starting the auctions below that price.
Admission is via a guest list, so basically you win the auction, pay me via Paypal as soon as possible, and I let Amanda Palmer’s rep know your name and address, which gets put on the guest list for the show whose auction you won and some schwag sent to you. And of course in the event of the show getting cancelled or of some kind of foobar in getting you on the list, I would refund your purchase.
I will donate 100% of the money raised by the auctions to flood relief programs in Vermont. I am not paying myself back for the cost of the tickets and I am not taking the EBay or Paypal fees out of the donation; I will pay the fees myself. After I receive receipts for the donations I will post them here on my blog to prove that I did what I’m saying I will do.
I will split the final total evenly between these four causes:
VT Farm Disaster Relief Fund – general Vermont-wide relief fund for farmers
Vermont Disaster Relief Fund – general disaster relief fund
West Hartford Library – a small public library near us which lost its entire children’s collection along with suffering quite a bit of other damage. You can read more about it at here
Operation Revive Royalton – Royalton is a town near me which was very hard hit; some farmers lost their entire crops, and I’d like very much to help them directly.
So please, if you’re interested, bid on the auctions, have a great time at the shows and know that 100% of the money you bid went to help out folks in Vermont who had their lives turned upside by Hurricane Irene. And if you can’t make it to the shows or can’t bid on the auctions, please pass pass the word on these auctions so that we can try to get the best results possible.
