Starmen.Net

• The Plush Trust Fund Charity Auction is tomorrow night!
  • 8 mini Saturn plushies
  • 4 small Saturn plushies with ball/chain
  • 3 Saturn sticker sets
  • 1 medium Saturn plushie with incognito scarf
  • 1 Geppu (Belch) plushie
• When: Nov 26 (Black Friday!) at 9PM Eastern
• Where: the EarthBound Fanfest Website or The Speed Gamers Homepage
• Why: 100% of the proceeds go to the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research

Be there

This should be a pretty phenomenal event, I’m looking forward to it.

Oh so this is happening much later tonight? I guess I will have no trouble attending it.

I unfortunately can’t take part in the auction (mostly due to me not having any money, partly because I think it’s at 2AM in my timezone, and also because I might be a bit too young for that), but I hope you guys like this drawing I did!

You guys are Ebaying it, or how is it going to work? When does bidding close?

We’re going to do it live with a Chipin widget (which accepts Paypal payments) and we’ll send 100% of the proceeds to the charity. If someone places a fake bid or otherwise fails to make their donation, we’ll re-auction the item again a little bit later.

The final auction for the Geppu (Belch) plushie will be a ‘cutthroat’ auction in which every bid goes to charity, regardless of who wins the plush. Lets say Bat Fax and HockeyMonkey get into a bidding war. BF bids $150 and HM bids $200, and from there they just donate the incremental amounts because their bids ‘stack’. For example, BF could increase his bid to $250 by donating another $100.

We’re going to give limited edition pins to all of the bidders in the cutthroat auction, so everyone who bids is guaranteed to get something. We’ll only print enough pins to give to the participants, so this won’t be showing up again in any other context.

You sir are evil. I wasn’t going to go for Belchy, but now that you’ve raised the stakes I have no choice but to compete. I hate having money anyway, and someday I want to see Back to the Future Part IV.

Be sure to help out. I currently have no CC to utilize to bid on items, so best of luck to everyone.

6,000+ for Parkinsons. Pretty sweet deal I think.

edit: holy crap rich people

reidman:

The final auction for the Geppu (Belch) plushie will be a ‘cutthroat’ auction in which every bid goes to charity, regardless of who wins the plush. Lets say Bat Fax and HockeyMonkey get into a bidding war. BF bids $150 and HM bids $200, and from there they just donate the incremental amounts because their bids ‘stack’. For example, BF could increase his bid to $250 by donating another $100.

Cripes, what an amazing night; there are no words, indeed.

WOW so the amount of money donated went up an order of magnitude after I left, seems like! That’s wonderful– thank you to everyone for participating in such a spectacular fundraising event.
How much did the cutthroat auction items eventually go for? And who won?

I can’t say much regarding the Incognito Saturn; I was working on other things at the time and just sort of had the stream playing in the background as I was working. The Belch auction, on the other hand, was utterly astounding.

As you might expect, it began with several bidders opening up with maybe twenty to thirty bucks each. Some of the more formidable players offered higher amounts to the table; fifty dollars, a hundred, a hundred and twenty five. Soon, major players in the race began to form. As the battle raged on, two opposing forces were left standing: Godeg, from our very own forums, against a devotee of The Speed Gamers, whose username escapes me at the moment.

Every minute, the stakes were raised higher and higher, until at last the two reached a gentlemen’s agreement when they reached six hundred dollars. I forget who surrendered to who, and I also seem to recall one of them accidentally donating an extra hundred to the cause, but the other quickly followed suit.

SUDDENLY, OUT OF COMPLETE F—-ING NOTHINGNESS, A DARK HORSE BY THE NAME OF CALVIN DESCENDED UPON THE COMBATANTS AND ATTEMPTED TO DWARF THEM BOTH WITH A STAGGERING DONATION OF EIGHT HUNDRED DOLLARS!

This is where things got totally crazy, to say the least. Bids got higher and higher; Godeg and the gentleman from The Speed Gamers matched Calvin’s donation, but this new challenger simply proceeded to up the ante to an imposing twelve hundred dollar donation!

From here, I can’t quite recall how each new donation played out, but I do remember being quite flabbergasted at each twist and turn. The gentleman from The Speed Gamers had hit somewhere around sixteen hundred dollars when he officially called it quits in the chat, but Godeg and Calvin continued to push forward.

Just as the stakes were climbing higher and higher, the gentleman went for one last Hail Mary and surprised everyone by bringing his total up past two thousand dollars, though in the end, it wasn’t enough. All three warriors had surpassed the two thousand mark, but it was the mysterious challenger Calvin who ultimately took home the rotting pile of puke with his phenomenally generous donation of twenty three hundred dollars.

After the excitement had subsided somewhat, we returned to the Hallowed Hall of Fangamer, where the Czar reidman greeted us in an incomprehensible state of what I have to assume was pure joy. As “Smiles and Tears” began to play over the radio, He left us with this last heartfelt statement:

“There are no words. Thank you.”

We are nerds. We have money and we know how to use it. 8)

I feel bad I wasn’t able to see all the thing since I did get called into work for some silly thing. But man, that is insane! Who would have thought plushies could go for that much? :P

Wow, what a stunning donation. Leave it to the MOTHER fandom. Nice job, guys. Maybe I’ll try my hand next year, when I actually have some money!

Hey, anyone remember bo_jangles? That’s me. Did I end up getting my payment in for the mini Saturn on time, because my computer crashed right after I did and I wasn’t sure I had made it in time. Can someone please tell me how it went down? Did I win?

are you gonna upload the stream on vimeo? since it was an officecam and all… please?

There might not be a recording of thespeedgamers’ stream, unfortunately, but reid claimed there was a recording of the fangamer stream.

I was so bummed to miss this, being in the internet-less wilds at my grandmother’s house.

But-but—-OH MY GOD guys. This is incredible, what a fantastic success!

What is Mr. Saturn doing down there?

phillipblabla:

To honor over 10,000 dollars earned, I give Fangamer this piece.

There is so much innuendo in that picture it’s unreal.

npc:

You just HAD to say it.

Nope.

npc:

bamazing

oh woah, haven’t heard that in a while.

Anyway, just gonna repeat what I said on Facebook earlier:
This went even better than I thought it would!
Great going guys!

Wow. I unfortunately missed the whole thing due to work and some unexpected plans that popped up afterwards, but wow. Even though I wasn’t there and didn’t donate anything, reading about this still manages to make me feel proud to just be a part (however small and lurker-ish) of a community that can make something amazing like this happen. Way to go Fangamer, The Speed Gamers and everyone who donated. You are all amazing.