With the official announcement out of the way, I have decided to tease you with daily posts until our fundraiser kicks off on Monday, 17th August. To keep appetites whetted, I thought I’d let you glimpse behind the scenes of the fundraiser. For those of you who are relatively new to the fandom and who were not around last year during the birthday or RAnet fundraisers, I have written down the gist of what you can expect. But before we get to that and for all old hands who don’t want to read through the small print, I have a little teaser.

Today’s RABirthdayAuctions Fact

Sorry, my Excel sheet remains deliberately fuzzy. But how about this little morsel for you: As you know I always set a starting price for the auctions, reflecting the price of the items if bought regularly in a shop or online. With 40 items on offer, the ballpark figure that we are starting the auctions off with – or rather the minimum hoped for proceeds – is 765 Euro. Nice!

More interestingly – I tallied the individual auction lots and have found out which chaRActers are most represented in this year’s offering of 40 lots.

There we go. Mr Thornton leads the field with seven pieces of fan art in his honour. RA and his moody alter ego Thorin are lumped together in second place with five auction items each; and the last space on the winners podium is given to Sir Guy, with four fan art items related to him.

There are, of course, other chaRActers represented – rest assured that fans of Astrov and Proctor, for instance, will also be able to find something in the auctions for their taste… To find out *what* exactly – you will have to wait a little longer 😉

And now the admin for newbies. Oldies, you can tune out here, more or less.

How the Birthday Auctions Work

The auction is an opportunity for a community of fans to raise some funds for charity and to show our appreciation of our favourite actor by donating the raised money in his name on his birthday. But the objective of it is also to have lots of fun together! The upcoming charity auctions will be conducted on eBay for ease of transaction, access and visibility. They are all private and non-commercial, a fundraiser for charity. I.e. the proceeds of the eBay auctions will all be donated to our chosen charity (minus incurred costs such as eBay and Paypal transaction fees). Most of the expected postage costs have already been covered by the recent mini fundraiser where I sold my handmade RA fan face masks. If extra postage costs beyond that incur and exceed my personal budget, I may use some of the auction proceed to pay for postage.

So, how does an eBay auction work? In case you are not familiar with the online marketplace, you need to register on eBay in order to be able to bid. You can do so on the eBay platform of your country/territory and in your own language – you will still be able to access the auctions (which will most likely be conducted over my home platform, eBay IE). I will provide direct links to the individual auctions, and you can click on them to access the items that you are interested in. From then on it’s pretty self-explanatory. You will see the current highest bid on the item, and you can bid more in order to win the auction. The items will go to the highest bidders, upon payment. If you are the auction winner, you will receive a notification e-mail that contains all the info on how to pay for your item and other next steps.

Since our items are all for fundraising, we are charging no postage fees (see above). The items will be carefully packaged and sent anywhere in the world. In some cases, the items will be despatched directly from the donor and not me. Depending on how far our postage fund reaches, the packages may be sent by registered mail, in which case buyers will receive a tracking number to track the progress of their parcel. No returns possible, I am afraid, as this is a charity project: First and foremost, please consider your bids a donation to charity – with the won item a little bonus – hence the no returns policy. Bidding is open to all, anywhere in the world! (But to avoid disappointment, I would like to ask you to please have a look at your national postal services and check whether your postal provider actually accepts incoming mail from abroad *at this time*. Some countries have suspended all overseas postal services. If that is the case in your country, it is possible that there are delays in shipping your auction winnings to you.)

Even for those who are not interested in items, or who do not have the means to bid in an auctions, the fundraiser can be great fun as we watch the bids rise and follow the most coveted items. It’s a bit of a thrill(er), actually 😉. I usually try and write updates on the progress of the auctions as we go along – (twice-)daily posts here on-blog, as well as more frequent tweets over on my Twitter. You are welcome to tweet along yourself! It usually culminates in a massive frenzy of tweets on the last day as all the auctions are coming to a close and I try to live tweet the results. Frankly, I wish I had a bot for that 😂. The final sum of the proceeds will be posted here on-blog soon after, and I will notify you via blog when the donation has been made.

Beneficiary and Voluntary Donations

As suggested by the poll yesterday, all proceeds of these auctions will go to LOROS via the muchloved web page which Richard set up as a tribute to his mum Margaret two years ago. If you do not wish to bid on an item or if you have been outbid but would like to contribute with a donation, there will be a Paypal powered donation button here on my blog for easy transfer of funds. All donations given via the Paypal button will also go into the final donation! Since the aim is to transfer all proceeds on Richard’s birthday, the donation button will only be active until the afternoon of the 22nd of August 2020. That way I can be sure that I am transferring the final sum without delay. On the muchloved web page you will be able to see a public message from Sonja/Guylty with birthday wishes for Richard – which will also act as public proof that I have transferred the money to the charity.

All pretty straightforward, right? Anyway, you don’t have to do anything other than relax, wait for the auctions to begin, and then to bid and cheer 😉. Only six days to wait…