[GrahamN]

I have copied below Chas's statement from the last auction catalogue:

Some Serious Words About Auctions

Do please devote a few minutes to reading this frank statement of facts by Chas. E. Miller which affects both the Radiophile Magazine and its readers
First, the good news. The two auctions at Cowbit this year were models of how readers of the Radiophile can organise events on our behalf and thereby relieve Jo and myself a great deal of work, worry and physical strain which otherwise inevitably takes its toll in various ways, the most notable effect of which as far as the readers are concerned is the ever-lengthening intervals between the publishing of magazine issues. One small touch at the end of the September 10th event pleased us immensely - one of the organisers offered to return the key and take the payment for the hire of the hall to the agent on our behalf, which may not sound much to some but means a lot to two people who need to relax after a long day. We thank again you good folk who made our 250 mile round trip to Cowbit worthwhile.

Unfortunately, the July 23rd Auction at Gnosall demonstrated all too clearly a repetition of what has gone wrong in the past and raised the same fears that caused me to pull the plug on auctions two years ago. Once upon a time as many as a dozen volunteer helpers would turn up early on the Saturday before the sale, when the setting-up work is done, but sadly those days are long in the past and on the 22nd July I waited alone at the hall for two hours until, thank heavens, a few "old faithfulls" - Alan and Mike, Brian and Susan, and Philip turned up. Shortly afterwards my son brought our biggest trailer, loaded with a huge number of sale items; but this was in fact only half the total to be offered and once they had been off-loaded it was then necessary for him to go to our storage site to fetch the remainder. He could not manage this unaided, but neither could anyone be spared from the hall to help him, so he was forced to search out and bribe a local teenager who, to give him credit, did work well. Once again, our new system of separate-vendor lot numbering showed its superiority over the old style strictly consecutive numbering by making it possible to arrange the sale items in a fraction of the time that used to be taken by this task, and I was home not long after six p.m. after a mere ten-hour working day.

The first warning of further problems ahead came when Nick Allsop asked for volunteers to assist with the portering, because it was obviously impossible for Brian to manage on his own. The response was a deafening silence and when somebody who had helped in the past was approached the answer was a blunt refusal. Then Neil stepped forward and saved the day for us. Thank goodness, Dawn had already volunteered to do the accounts, which she handled with her customary expertise and celerity. By five o'clock all the lots had been sold and paid for and the hall was emptying fast - so fast that before we knew it Philip and I were appalled to find that we had been left on our own with all the tables and chairs to be cleared away and the leftover lots, the video equipment and the public address gear to be loaded into the big trailer. It is difficult to put into words the utter despair that gripped us. With half a dozen volunteer helpers all that was necessary could have been achieved in less than half an hour, but for us it was an impossibility. Philip did his best; he shifted the tables and chairs sufficiently to be able to sweep the floor effectively, while I assembled the lighter parts of the audio and camera kit as near to the doors as I could manage. Neither of us had a mobile telephone so we could not ask for assistance, and it wasn't until seven o'clock that Jo began to wonder why I hadn't returned home and came looking for me. She had no mobile telephone either so she had to go back to our house to get in touch with my son. He, as usual, was engaged in milking a large herd of cows and couldn't help until that job was finished. In the end it was a quarter past nine when I locked the front door of the hall, after a near fourteen hour working day. Can you blame me if the thought uppermost in my mind was "never again", closely followed by it would have been nice had anyone bothered to ask if Philip and I needed help.

At this point readers will probably be wishing to ask a couple of questions. First, what went wrong with the arrangement whereby Rob Rusbridge acted as auction manager? I blame myself to a large extent for the failure of this venture because presumably I could not have made it sufficiently clear to him that I was seeking someone to take over and to continue employing the same methodology that Jo and I had developed successfully over the last twenty five years or so. Rob, with the best intentions in the world, tried to fix something that wasn't broken and sadly the results were unsatisfactory for all concerned. This, exacerbated by the trauma he must have suffered from some lunatic behaviour on the part of one of our vendors (see p60, issue 138/9) caused him to pull out just before the April event at Gnosall. He has since told Graham Newman that he has switched directions and is now engaged on electronic research work; we wish him well. The second question must be, if the auctions cause us so much grief, why persist with them? Well, apart from the fact that we feel it our duty to assist those unfortunate readers or dependants of readers who suddenly find themselves having to dispose of a houseful of vintage radio equipment, the magazine needs and relies upon the extra income generated by the auctions. Although we have increased its size and introduced high quality colour throughout, the subscription has not been increased for many years. This is also despite the fact that since the Royal Mail was privatised postage rates have risen year by year, and the situation has been exacerbated by this Government's imposition of V.A.T. on sending out magazines.

So why not raise the subscription rate? Unfortunately it takes a very long time for an increase to add substantially to a magazines income and there is always the threat of the Law of Diminishing Returns coming into effect. It is also pertinent to mention that our takeover of Radio Bygones came at a price, i.e. the honouring of the previously paid subscriptions, which to date has cost us a rather large four-figure sum.

So this is the situation: although we sorely need the extra income that the auctions provide, the workload which those at Gnosall impose upon us is so heavy as to be unsustainable unless extra and substantial voluntary assistance can be assured: those good people already mentioned cannot be expected to work longer and more exhausting hours than they already do (at this point I must tell you that Brian and Susan do an enormous amount of work behind the scenes in meeting vendors and appraising lots) and I dread any repetition of what happened in July. The fact that I already know that one of our key helpers will not be available for setting up on 7th October does nothing to relieve any forebodings. What's to be done? One suggestion I have received is to recruit auction stewards who would receive various concessions in return, in sufficient numbers to ensure that half a dozen at least would be available at any one time. This, I am afraid, is much more easily said than done. Many readers will remember the Sambrook Summer Specials which for years were extremely popular but eventually faltered and, despite many appeals, had to be abandoned because of a lack of volunteers to help set them up. My personal preference would be a revival of The Friends of The Radiophile, a group of dedicated readers which, by handling all the many small details of setting up events and auctions enabled me to concentrate on producing the magazine. Surely it's not impossible that there are amongst our readers sufficient public-spirited people willing to take on the job? I live in hope.

At this point I must apologise for the delay in publishing the next issue of The Radiophile (incorporating Radio Bygones). Graham Harold\'s sudden retirement nearly three years ago was a body blow. Apart from handling telephone calls and answering all the correspondence, Graham Harold also edited the Readers\' Letters pages, handled Bake-O-Bryte orders, researched service sheet queries, took card payments, printed and sent out the auction catalogues and did many other chores. I wrote shortly after he had left that it simply wasn't going to be possible for one person - me - to do all the jobs just mentioned and produce the magazine on time, and this has proved to be all too true. Graham Newman has done wonders for us - we may not have been able to survive without him - but even he cannot do everything and unless or until more assistance is forthcoming it is inevitable that it will take longer and longer to attend to everything. For instance, Jo and I have already spent a working week on preparing this catalogue and report, a week in which we would have been far more appropriately occupied in producing a magazine; and since our work load must be reduced - holidays are what other people have - something will have to go. I don't want to do it, but unless some sort of voluntary support group can be organised, I'm afraid that the Radiophile auctions will have to be abandoned after the end of this year. What happens at this next auction on 8th October and the forthcoming one on 10th December ought to provide a pointer as to what their future will be. I sincerely hope it may prove to be positive.