The person who donated the daylily contacts you after you win, and you make arrangements with her/him on shipping. If you do have a problem with the plant, you are able to contact the shipper about it. I have bid on the Region 11 auctions and received large clumps instead of the double fans advertised. Debra

This is the first time the online auction has topped $10,000...thanks to the many generous donors and bidders!

Hello all, January 15th indicated a server issue with one of the servers involved in running this auction. Your own personal service provider's server, the AHS's server, and the webmaster's server which sends out the email messages for passwords and out bid notices, etc. The service provider for generating emails was the culprit. This meant that all bids were going through and those registered prior to Wednesday could participate. Those that had been outbid could see they were outbid but only by checking the item page, not by relying upon an email notification. This email generation step was clear by mid-day Wednesday. All is well in the universe again. The most common problem of not receiving passwords when first registering has been that the email goes to folk's spam or junk mail folder. This is on the registrant's end of the communication. Check your folders and either click not junk or drag to your inbox (each email software is a bit different). This action of approving of mail coming into you will indicate to your spam filter that you want future emails from that address. Appreciate your interest and enthusiasm! Have fun and grab one of the treasures posted.

I might be able to add some perspective here, having run the AHS National Convention plant auctions back in the early auction days, 1984-1992. We raised +$20K at some of those auctions with a lot of effort on everyone's part - with bids often north of $1,000 for the latest and greatest introductions from the early hybridizing efforts. Many people sat in those auctions and just gasped when the bidding went over $100, but others with experience in auctions, the quality of the material offered and the spirit of supporting the AHS would bid within their budget. Was it beyond my budget? Most of the time. Was I serious about generating as much funds for the AHS as possible? You betcha, and we have the AHS still today because of that reason! Membership fees wouldn't cover the Journal and other AHS needs. 1987 Wilmington Delaware AHS National Convention auction story: as AHS auction director back then, supervising the auctioneers and clerks, cash/check flow and plant delivery, if I wanted to bid on a plant, I would properly announce that I was stepping out of my role and would bid from the floor as everyone else, just so they knew. I bid for a gorgeous very large deep blue seiboldiana seedling, can't even remember the name now, but the plant was 3 ft tall, leaves about 2 feet across each and a very thick single division. When the bid crossed $50, I took a deep breath and entered the fray. Recall my mother Pauline Banyai was in charge of the auction clerking: boy, did she throw me a dirty look. My dear wife Lois sitting next to Mom as the record keeper of the auction had gone white with fright at what I was doing! Three small boys to feed at home and this meathead husband is bidding $50 for a blue seiboldiana seedling - he has 100's just like it at home, and his mother even more! What was he thinking....... The bids proceeded by $5 to $75, then some bidders dropped out with just me and one other man (who I didn't know - if I had known him I would have probably deferred to him out of respect!). I finally won the bid at $100 and he was clearly frustrated at not getting it! My mom and wife could barely sit through the AHS Convention Awards dinner and speaker(which directly followed the auctin), they were so mad at me. After that final Convention night dinner and cleanup, I was packing all the AHS Cut Leaf show bottles (we supplied them ourselves back then, and I had to provide 400+ Perrier type bottles!)in my pickup truck, along with that auction plant. As I put the plant in the back of the pickup truck, who should come up but the man who had lost the final bid! He introduced himself, said he would really like to have that plant and would pay me any price to have it! I said he could have it for the same $100: he promptly paid me and was all smiles, as were my mom and dear wife Lois when they finally had a chance to chew me out and hear the rest of the story. I became close friends with that gentleman, who will remain unnamed! He continued for a few years to be a very large AHS auction contributor - that's how we came up with the Big Bucks award to honor both the plant material contributor and the persons buying the most! Bruce