Hello all,

While this is a bit off topic for the Acaeum I hope you'll bear with me and you'll understand why I wanted to share this here.

Aaron Koelman is one of the earliest members of the Dungeon Crawl Classics community. Aaron was an art collector first, then a fan and supporter of DCC. He's a steady presence at Gary Con, Gen Con and known for his decency, friendliness and being one of the people you would want to sit down with at a table and roll some dice with.

Unfortunately Aaron has been fighting Stage IV Pancreatic cancer over the last year. He's been through several rounds of chemotherapy and continues to fight. In the tradition of Minnesotans who just don't want to be a bother Aaron had been keeping this a private matter until he shared the details with some of us at Gary Con. In all honesty the news really struck home for me and when he told me I was just miserable.

With everything going on one of the key things at play is Aaron's son. He's a wonderful, bubbly, silly 6 year old and Aaron is trying to get things sorted out to start an education fund for him. When we spoke about in Lake Geneva I got a sense of Aaron's apprehension in that regard and offered to try to help.

The result is that several of us are coordinating a charity auction to benefit Aaron's sons education account. The event will be live on the Goodman Games Twitch Channel on the evening of July 8th. (This isn't an official Goodman Games effort, Joseph is simply letting us use the channel.) As with other virtual auctions we have done previously items will go to high bidders. Once payment and shipping charges have been sorted out they are then mailed out promptly.

We are sorting out a catalog of items that will be in the auction and that will be published shortly after the closing date for donations. (July 1st.) So far donations include original artwork from Erol Otus, Doug Kovacs, Peter Mullen and others. There are also rarities from the RPG side of things and donations are steadily coming in. If you would like to donate something please feel free to ping me here or on Facebook.

To make sure we have proper transparency and separation in place Jon Hershberger from Black Blade Publishing will be handling all of the financial side of things, taking care of payments for auction items. If you would simply like to make a donation I am certain he can handle that as well. There's not going to be any premiums or handling fees and aside from postage all money raised will be going to where it is supposed to go.

I try to ask for help rarely and have never asked for support for something like this on the Acaeum before. That said I hope that this community will find things of interest in our efforts and reward them with the same generosity and camaraderie that it has always displayed. While I have tried to do my part to raise money on behalf of different things at Gen Con, Gary Con, NTRPG and the various Goodman Games auctions this effort is far more personal for me.

If you have any questions please let me know.

Thanks,

Jim

Wonderful endeavor you and Jon are undertaking.

Did that catalog ever get posted?  I must have missed it, but I wanted to torture myself by perusing what i missed out on

It’s a shame the auction wasn’t promoted or opened up online.
Would have been good to have seen what was available and to have thrown in some bids.

They could probably have doubled their return on eBay and had the whole collecting community bidding on stuff, even with eBay taking their slice of the pie.

Anyone know if there was much of interest to collectors in there?

<Edit>

Seems like it was held on Goodman Games’ social media account, or one of their members accounts. A few picks were published on GG’s website, but no details of how to when the auction was to take place, how to take part, or what in fact was going to be sold.

I thing this was an in-house thing for GG staff and friends, albeit they were seeking donations to help the cause from outside the community.

No-one seems to have suggested that opening up the auction itself to the wider community might have increased the return. Perhaps by concentrating their efforts on reaching as many people as possible with the auction and advertising it everywhere, and leaving the auction to established channels, they could have raised substantially more.

Who knows? I feel for Aaron’s son. Hope his early start in the community and the friends he has around him lead him to a career in the community if that is his choice. I believe we have an hobby that really helps kids be creative and learn. Let’s hope people hold doors open for this guy.

Was there anything of note that went under the hammer?