Sometimes, best laid plans get better

MILFORD — A little serendipity can go along way. In the antique business, an unexplored corner of an old barn, a winning auction bid or an unexpected yard sale find could bring luck and perhaps fortune. It follows then, that what happened on the night of Nov. 22, when a group of antique dealers got together for what was to be an uneventful office holiday party, must be kismet. “It was our annual dealer holiday party,” explained Charlie Giachetti, who with wife, Joanne, owns the Old Lumberyard Antiques, a multi-dealer complex. He said the dealers and family members gathered for a good time - about 25 people in all - having brought food and drink to celebrate the holidays. After the partying, Giachetti recalled, the evening was still young, and there was a lot of leftover food. But he had an idea. “It started out as a joke,” he admitted. But as fate would have it, that joke ended up raising a whopping $600 for charity. Giachetti explained that most of the dealers buy their merchandise at auctions, so he grabbed the group’s favorite dessert and auctioned it off just for fun. “The dealers, because they love auctions,” he said, “really got into it.” Giachetti first suggested a goal of one hundred dollars and “it snowballed from there.” After they auctioned off all of the leftover food and beverages - even half-empty bottles of wine, someone asked what they would do with the money. For Joanne and Charlie, the answer was easy: an earlier plan had fallen through for a joint venture to benefit Safe Haven, an organization that offers help to victims, survivors and their families dealing with domestic violence and sexual abuse issues. So this was an unexpected second chance to help. “We kept going,” Charlie said of the auction. From $100 they went to $200 and the two hundred turned into three hundred … and in less than an hour they had raised $600. “We started auctioning off gift certificates offered by the dealers. My wife and I auctioned off a discount on a month’s rent,” exclaimed Giachetti. One dealer donated two weeks in a condo down south. For dealer Maria Richardson, “It was a wonderful thing.” Fellow dealer and husband, Gary, agreed, “It is nice to give back to the community…” Joanne added, “I thought it was great. We did something on the spur of the moment for charity.” The Giachettis want to celebrate the business’s 10th anniversary in September with a much larger charity auction. They will invite area businesses to participate. And so despite the impromptu success they experienced with their first auction, this one no doubt will be well-planned.