Push Rods annual fundraiser a quirky and successful event

Published 1:30 am Thursday, February 20, 2020

The term “Chinese auction” is something of a misnomer, and if you do enough research you find out that nobody really seems to know the origin of the name.

But whatever its definition or origin, one thing’s for sure: The fundraising mechanism really works out well for the annual event held by the Push Rods of Hoquiam.

Held this past Sunday at the Hoquiam Elks lodge, the fundraiser was one of the local classic car club’s most successful ever. And all proceeds from the annual auction go to local charities in the name of the Push Rods club.

“It went very well. We had a ton of people and raised a lot of money,” said Denny Bickar, who is president of Push Rods and served as “auctioneer” for the event.

It wasn’t really isn’t an auction at all, rather a series of on-the-spot raffles for a wide array of donated items. The way the Push Rods do it involves “bids” of $1 each, meaning there are a lot of dollar bills flying around.

Here’s an example. The first item up for bid Sunday was a crisp, donated $100 bill. (There were several of these offered up throughout the afternoon.) On the auctioneer’s cue, bidders hold up as many dollar bills as they would like to buy chances at the prize. Push Rod members serve as spotters throughout the hall and move from bidder to bidder, holding up fingers to let the auctioneer know how many numbers — or chances at the prize — each person wants to buy at a buck each. The auctioneer will go around the room numerous times as there are only about 10 spotters to serve what had to be close to 300 people.

Depending on the item, a person might buy just one number or scores of them. That person is assigned a number for each $1 donated. Depending on the desirability of each item, the final total can keep going up and up. Once all bidding is complete, a winning number is drawn from the hopper. For that particular C-note, the final number of entries was 221. Later on, the $100 bills were going for quite a bit more, with one ending at $275 and another at $311.

And this process repeated itself for four hours’ worth of prizes, with some of the live raffles taking up to 15 or 20 minutes to complete.

Cosmopolis Mayor Kyle Pauley is a regular attendee of the event and took home the second item out of the gate — a $50 bill and $50 worth of lottery scratch tickets. Pauley put a total of $3 into the bidding, which ended at $286. The lottery tickets ended up being worth $43 when scratched, so Pauley netted $90 on his $3 investment.

“A solid win right out of the gate,” Pauley quipped a little while later. “You can’t beat that, plus it all goes to a good cause.”

There were dozens of items available: Gift baskets with wine food and gift certificates to local restaurants, several more $100 bills, a kid-sized pedal-powered fire truck, a $300 watch, a stay-and-eat package from Quinault Beach resort & Casino, a gun cabinet, a Coach purse and even a beautifully restored vintage Johnson outboard engine, which ended up being the day’s top money-raiser at $515, to name a few.

That Johnson outboard was won by Aberdeen optometrist Greg Bogdanovich, who collects vintage engines and also happens to be treasurer of the Push Rods club. He wanted the item so badly he put $60 into that raffle alone, according to Bickar.

Meanwhile, throughout the whole thing, Bickar and two assistants — Carla Copeland and Doris Daly — had to keep up with all the numbers being purchased at a feverish rate.

“It’s taxing,” said Bickar. “The saving grace is the gals who work behind me. It all worked very well, but at the end of the day I was tired.”

The event ended up being such a success that some items never made it to stage.

“The items were going for so much money that it took a lot of time, so we had a lot of stuff left over,” said Bickar. Now club members will have to figure out whether to carry those items over to next year, use them to raise funds at another event or even give some of them back to donors.

“A whole bunch of people left after the big 50-50 raffle,” said Bickar, “The money was starting to leave and we didn’t want to give stuff away.”

That 50-50 raffle, by the way, awarded $908 to the eventual winner, the biggest prize ever in the event’s history.

“The Elks did very well, we did very well,” said Bickar. “Everybody put in a great effort and all the money goes back into the community, so it’s a good thing.”