01 April 2019 By Andy Moss
After lots of publicity around the region the function room at the Ravensworth Arms was taken over for a second hand sale. With the function doors wide open lots of kit was unloaded from car boots and arranged on tables around the room.
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All sorts of kit was for sale. I came away with a chart, a DSMB with crack bottle, a knife for my travel BC (which I have not yet purchased) and an extra small BC for my son. There was so much more I could have bought including a virtually new Buddy Commando; a very nice dry suit, in great condition (I would like a spare) and some Apeks regulators which looked like they had never been used. The list goes on and clearly others too made good purchases, a wet-suit bought on the evening was recently used at a sports diver training session at Ellerton lake (it does get that warm in July).
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I guess about 40 – 50 people turned up over the night, some selling to clear space in their garage; others to turn their excess kit into cash; others just wanting new toys. Whether to get them diving in the short term, or to upgrade that which they had, -hence the DSMB with crack bottle for me (I am told I will need one ?) – there was kit to buy. For others it was a combination of the two, after all you can never have enough toys ?.
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It was run very informally. There was no charge for selling but the Chairman did wander around asking for donations to the RNLI, a valuable service we all hope we will never need. In the end in excess of £57 was collected (plus 1 cent?!). So later that night, a donation of £58 + gift aid was made to the RNLI hopefully giving them around £70.
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