surviving the storm

As some of you know, I have a small car collection, very small, and I recently consigned one of the cars to the Russo and Steele auction. On the first night of the auction Scottsdale experienced one of the worst windstorms that they ever had and blew the tents down over the cars. Some of the cars were exposed, some were beaten up by the poles that held up the tents and others were pelted with flying debris looking like they had been in a hail storm or worse, and some that were under the collapsed tent looked like they had the finish sanded off of them. Mine was one of those, but I cant complain because the cars surrounding mine were beaten by tent poles. Many of the cars were a complete loss, others were beaten badly enough that they needed major repairs, and some could be cleaned up enough to go thru the auction and many of them werent touched at all. The Scottsdale fire marshal deemed the auction site unsafe and locked it down until Saturday morning when only the owners were allowed in to see their cars. The auction continued on Sunday morning and the consigners were given the option to pull their cars, or run them across the block and hope for the best. One of the things that disturbed me the most were the owners with no damage to their cars that pulled them anyway. The second thing that disturbed me were the amount of restored cars that showed so much body putty where the damage was inflicted. Those owners wisely pulled there cars, I would assume because they didnt want to get caught mis representing them once the damage was aparent. Some of the cars that were damaged and went thru the sale didnt appear to have much bondo on them so I assure those owners didnt feel they had anything to hide. I had my car cleaned up and it ran thru on Monday afternoon. That ended up being a good thing because there seemed to be a lot more buyer traffic on Monday than Sunday. I was, and still am, slightly alarmed by the talk from some of the consignors about the possibility of not getting paid for their cars because of the loss incurred by Russo and Steele because of the storm. I decided not to jump ship and sold the car anyway. I didnt get great money, but it wasnt the lowest seller in the auction, and I think all things considered I did pretty well.
You see, I needed to sell something to pay for the race engine that I had built for my vette, I blew it up in September on the track and have been trying to sell something so I could afford to race again. I picked the car that I did because cars are somewhat like women. Once they have been restored, you have to keep it up or they end up getting old again. Kind of like a woman thats had a face lift and needs another too keep from getting wrinkles on her face, except that on a car you dont usually end up squinting or have a permanent smile.
This was my first time trying to sell a car thru one of the Scottsdale auctions, which are some of the most prestiges auctions in the country. It might have been much more fun if the weather hadnt ruined it for me. I didnt sleep well at all until I knew what kind of condition my car was in, and then worried constantly until it sold. I might try it again, but not in the near future.