Tablecloth smashes ConFuzzled auction record
In 2008, the British furry convention ConFuzzled raised £1,600 for charity. In 2009, ConFuzzled raised £2,000 for charity. Today – less than an hour ago – ConFuzzled smashed that record with only one item.
The item, a tablecloth with artwork by guest of honour TaniDaReal had a starting bid of £50, which quickly exploded into the hundreds and then the thousands. In a bidding war that lasted several minutes between staff member Colifox and American furry fan Beshon, the bids finally jumped from £1,800 to £2,000 and ConFuzzled history was made for the largest bid paid for any item in an auction.
The same record was broken just a few bids earlier, with the opportunity for an exclusive chance to feed big cats in a non-public reserve in Kent – owned and operated by the Wildlife Heritage Foundation, this year's charity – going for £550, which was won by a young fursuiter named Kivuli.
The auction as a whole raised £7,789, nearly four times as the previous year, of which £5,052 went to charity; following the addition of items sold in the Dealer's Den, the amount going to charity totalled £7,501.
This year's ConFuzzled has been a record breaking year. The convention has posted 90% growth on 2009's event (giving rise to the belief that it's the fastest growing convention in the world - at current projections it would be the largest in Europe within three years) and it retains its place as the convention with the highest ratio of fursuiters.
About the author
Alexander Grey — read stories — contact (login required)a Fruit bat
Founder, editor-in-chief and tea cosy of the (now defunct) Furtean Times.
Comments
Alex, thanks for the mention in your article! The auction was incredible, Tani is a wonderful and talented person, and ConFuzzled absolutely rocked my socks off! It was my pleasure to help entertain everyone, and be able to donate to a wonderful charity like the WHF! :)
I had a chat with Nall (the con treasurer) after he recovered; Tuesday morning's figures are even higher.
It's especially impressive considering the number of people there!
Haha yeah, Nall was funny right after the auction. When they brought me back in to talk to him, he was just kind of stuttering and like.... omg. ;D
I'd just been woken up by the radio with "We have a financial emergency". ;P Thank you for your OMG moment, and the support of our charity! We have to go present a cheque, I wanna see their faces when we do.. ^^;
You had better go get one of those big checks and take a camera with you. We all want to see their faces.
Those big checks don't come cheap!
The cheque handed over might have been bigger if they hadn't taken the ridiculous decision to have porn art in the auction with no splitting, censorship or even any forewarning of the content (a complete shock after the lack of such art in previous years). Thanks to that many of us had to miss out on the auction, otherwise we'd have been sick.
I'm sure it's been said, but: we're sorry that the presence of adult art in our auction caused you problems. Auction staff are aware and have already considered how best to approach this for CFz 2011.
I must emphasise that we only had one complaint of this nature, but we do listen! Hopefully we will solve this in a manner most satisfying to you and our other attendees.
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