1st Mistletoe Auction 2010

A light covering of snow on the mistletoe and holly lots at today’s auctions in Tenbury Wells.

This was the first auction of this season (there’re two more – on the 7th and the 14th) and also the first at the new site – the disused part of Tenbury Business Park.

The cold weather seemed to jam up my DSLR camera for a while, so I haven’t got many pics of the earliest visitors – members of the druid Mistletoe Foundation, who came to bless this year’s crop.

Here’s one of them after the main event, sprinkling the blessing water amongst the lots.

 

The site seemed to work well – despite the snow (there weren’t many problems getting cars in and out of the snow covered car park field).

Good turn-out, everything sold very efficiently and quickly, and lots of media interest too – BBC TV Regional News, S4C filming for a later mistletoe feature on Welsh TV, plus regional newspapers.

Most of the usual buyers, sellers, hangers-on too – the auctions bring together a rather odd group of people who only ever meet here – never in-between.

I didn’t monitor the prices – so haven’t been able to answer the various queries since about the state of the market!  I’ll try and get some data on this soon – expectations were that wholesale mistletoe prices would be low – as the crop is well-berried again this year – but that doesn’t necessarily mean that high street prices are low .

Some more pics below: