Estate Sales, Designer Home Furnishings and Artwork, The City Club of Washington, and Designer Ceramic and Tile Auctions offer everything you need to spruce up a room or even completely redesign!

From our Estate Sale Online Auction that closes this Thursday, you could buy a funky southwestern style geometric wicker sofa and matching side chair to add a splash of color and bring a bit of the west into your cabin, basement, patio, or rec room. Right now this sofa and chair set is being sold for only $110!

This quatrefoil-style wood mirror is currently bid at just $10. You can paint the wood to match the colors that you already have in the room and give it a fresh new look, or leave just as it is to add depth and a new, interesting shape to the room.

The City Club of Washington Online Auction features a plethora of chairs including leather and velvet club chairs. For designing on a budget, we suggest these carved cherry dining chairs with ball and claw feet. If you aren’t into the floral pattern on the seat, they would be super easy to reupholster with new fabric to compliment your current decor. Use this little DIY trick and voila! Your chairs will look brand new and nobody will have to know you bought all seven of them used at online auction for only $15 a pop.

In the designer ceramic and porcelain tile online auction you can choose from over 150 lots of new, designer tile that is great for kitchens, bathrooms, patios, and everything in between. Tile is a great purchase from Rasmus Auctioneers and we sell it quite often! Our designer tile auctions are the perfect opportunity to get the right amount and bid your price on it. Good tile can completely change the look and feel of a room and is difficult to find at such a great price! Right now most of the lots don’t have bids higher than 50 cents a piece on them!

As far as designing on a budget goes, it doesn’t get much better than our model designer home furnishings and artwork online auctions. This auction has everything from original pieces of art to complete dining room sets. If you are looking to completely refunish your living room without breaking the bank, bid on one of the three living room sets in this online auction. This one is currently at a bid of only $32 for the sofas, pillows, and love seats!

To add a nice accent to a room think about a fun ceramic vase like this one, currently selling for less than $2 (or choose from about 20 other vases in this auction)! This sale also features retro style convertible sofas, complete bedroom sets, and colorful art in all styles.

In addition to these online auctions, we also have a multi-estate online auction, a lighting online auction, and even a few fitness centers coming up if you are looking to add a home gym as well!

Chris is presenting new ways for managing and marketing auctions

Chris Rasmus, our CEO, will be teaching a technology course for the students of the the Certified Auctioneers’ Institute on the campus of Indiana University March 18-22.

In his technology seminar, Chris will be sharing our best practices and the technologies that we use to market and manage our online auctions. Chris has been a speaker at multiple NAA and VAA (Virginia Auctioneers Association) events and conferences and is known as a pioneer in online auctions and auction technologies. Often, his seminars are so packed that there is nothing but standing room when the seminar starts.

The National Auctioneers Association posted an article about Chris’ upcoming engagement on the official news blog of the NAA. To read the entire article, click here.

Everyone on the administrative side of Rasmus telecommutes. Yep, that means that we do not have an office at all, just a P.O. Box, cell phones and laptops. This model works very well for us as an online-only company, but anyone who works from home knows that it can sometimes be difficult to motivate yourself in the morning when you don’t have to beat rush hour.

If you work from home like us, this article by Ken Purdy can give you some great tips and tricks for being a successful professional from the comfort of your home office (or couch)!

There’s an app for: Organization
Wunderlist (Free)
Between your phone, computer, iPad, and three email addresses, it can often be difficult to keep track of everything that you have to do in one place. But now, there is Wunderlist. Wunderlist is great because you can create to do lists, add notes to tasks, organize your tasks by lists and by date, and email your lists or share them with the cloud. And you can get this app on all of your devices.

There’s an app for: Networking
Cardmunch By LinkedIn (Free)In the “digital age” it can be hard to keep track of those tiny, elusive business cards you get while networking, and often to remember who or where you got it from in the first place. Cardmunch is an app from LinkedIn that allows you to simply take a picture of someone’s business card, and immediately have that information converted to a contact AND show you their LinkedIn profile and connections.

There’s and app for: Brushing up on your Spanish
iTranslate (Free)
If you don’t use it, you lose it right? Well you can brush up on the language of your choice (this app has everything from Spanish to Afrikaans to Macedonian) with iTranslate. Just paste in text, or use the voice recognition feature (which is $1.99 for 75 “transactions”) to speak the phrase you want to translate. The app will give you the written phrase, and will say the phrase out loud for you (in some languages).

There’s an app for: Getting in Shape
Nike Training Club (Free)
This app is like having a personal trainer right on your phone! It teaches you how to do exercises (with pictures and videos!) and gives you a workout tailored to your specific goal like getting leaned, toned, strong, or focused.

Check out the best apps from 2011 in categories like lifestyle, games, and on the go according to Time magazine here:

http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/completelist/0,29569,2044480,00.html

Highlights from 2011:

Kenny, Blake and Pat from our On- Site Team

380 online only auctions! That’s around 7 auctions a week!

5 asset bridge partners! We are so happy to have our partners Quinn’s, JLR, OLS and Auctions in Hawaii. All of these partners have helped us get to where we are today and brought us new and interesting auctions throughout the year!

Tommy with VIP Services and Abby from the Administrative Team

Over 40,000 bidders! Yes, you read right! The people we would like to thank most are you, our bidders. Our buyers are often our greatest advocates, and that allows us to

Marie (PR), Candy (Accounting), Kath and Trish (Administrative)

have competitive, diverse auctions and give us the great feedback that we need to keep Rasmus on top!

Owner Chris Rasmus was also inducted into the National Auctioneers’ Association Hall of Fame. We are so proud of him!

So thank you to everyone for a great year, and we look forward to an even better 2012 with more auctions, more asset bridge partners, more clients and more buyers!

Chris with Scott, our On-Site Director

Chris and long time friend Rick Romanis being inducted into the Auctioneers' Hall of Fame!

Chris and Sue Rasmus, CEO and Social Media Director

The North Face E-Tip Gloves 

There is nothing more frustrating than having to take your glove off every time that you want to use your touch screen smart phone, and now, you don’t have to! The North Face has come out with their “E-Tip Glove” These gloves have “Xstatic conductive fingercaps on the thumbs and index fingers”, which basically means that the phone can still sense your fingers through the gloves. There’s also a grid of silicone dots on the palm, thumb, index, and middle fingers to improve your grip on your gadget, not to mention they look pretty sleek.

Bluetooth Headset

Since the laws banning handheld use of your cell phone while driving in both Maryland and the District, those of us who are always on the go have had to find other ways to keep in touch on the road. While a Bluetooth headset may make you look like you are having a heated argument with…yourself while in traffic they are well worth it to avoid the up to $100 fine.

Jam Box

Wish that your phone was just loud enough to play music so that more than one person can hear it? It is when you use a Jam Box. The Jam Box is a Rasmus favorite for small gatherings, lounging poolside, and on-the-go music listening.

Spotify 

When we use our Jam Box, a lot of the time we are playing Spotify. While we still love Pandora, Spotify lets us choose exactly what we want to listen to, and we can listen to entire albums for FREE! Downloading Spotify is easy, and you can even connect it to your Facebook so that others can see what you are listening to, and you can see what they are listening to.

iPhone 4S & Siri

We love the iPhone 4S and all of the joy and entertainment that Siri brings. Siri is great for making and keeping track of appointments and reminders,obscure questions just to see what Siri’s response will be, and of course finding businesses that are nearby. But if you still have the iPhone 4 there is an app called Vlingo that is the next best thing. As one of our on-site workers Jay would say, it’s “Kind of Siri, but not really.” and is a voice to text application.

That’s right!

Buyers who have been to a removal have undoubtedly signed their name on the line next to each and every one of their items in our removal books. You will still be doing that, but Rasmus is once again moving over to the digital world. At upcoming removals, you may be asked to “sign my pad” as we are now switching to digital removal books. You will still have to sign for each of your items, but now you will do it with just the swipe of your finger on the iPad.

Rasmus is continuing to reduce its carbon footprint and make the auction process easier for you and us! We would love to hear feedback from any of you who get to experience this new checkout process, so let us know what you think!

Mike, Scott, Ron, Dave, Pat, and Kenny (on table) ready for the removal...of auction items of course!

Obviously all of these guys have chosen to be doctors this year for Halloween (and Kenny apparently chose to be a patient) what are you going to be? Or where is the spookiest place you have ever spent your Halloween? Comment and let us know! We love to hear from our buyers!

Also, if you know of any places like the OCMC that are relocating, rightsizing, or closing don’t forget that Rasmus pays 20% on referrals…could be a great little something extra in your pocket before the Holidays!

If you haven’t read the first part of our history yet, click here to catch up!

Now that Ron had his hands on some quality products he needed somewhere to put all of it and ended up buying a warehouse. Ron’s daughter Kathleen (who you have probably talked to if you have called our office) decided to join her father in this venture and began to work with him doing all of the administrative duties that accompanied this new job. Around this same time, his son Chris was graduating from Virginia Tech with the intention of going into the business of marketing to the quickly aging baby boomer generation. To his surprise, his father suggested that Chris come work for him instead and flattered by the offer from a man who was known to fly solo, Chris accepted the challenge…and the rest is history.

Chris' Graduation from Mendenhall School of Auctioneering

Ron and Chris quickly built a buyer base as lawyers and businessmen started purchasing their used furniture. These customers also evolved into their clients, and a few of those lawyers were on the Board of Trustees. Soon Ron and Chris were appraising people’s belongings after they went bankrupt, since they were already highly educated in the value of used furniture, equipment and the like.

After a while when they realized what Ron and Chris could do, simply appraising the items was not enough. Trustees began to ask the duo to do more and more and become more involved with the bankruptcy process as time went on. These requests ranged from changing the locks on a building that had gone into foreclosure to throwing out sour milk in disconnected refrigerators and eventually, auctioning off the items once appraised. Every single request was met with one answer: “Sure we can!”

Since Ron a) did not know how to auctioneer and b) really had no interest or skills in speaking to or entertaining a crowd he handed Chris $500 and sent him off in a minivan to North Carolina for two weeks to attend the Mendenhall School of Auctioneering. It was there that Chris learned the good old fashioned art of auctioneering, and mastered the classic auctioneer’s chant.

If any of you ever got the chance to see Chris chant back in the day at a live auction, you would never think that he was so nervous his first few auctions that he couldn’t even introduce himself and the sale. But Chris took to auctioneering quickly and Chris and Ron became the guys to call when someone went bankrupt, as they could handle the process from start to finish.

Unfortunately like anything where the courts are involved, there was a lot of paperwork that went along with bankruptcy auctions. Chris and Ron were doing all of the work, collecting the money, then having to give all of it to the court and subsequently petition the court for their 10% share of the money back. They came to find that more often that not, with all of the time, money, and man-hours that this job required, the process was just not worth it and the Rasmus men were, once again, broke.

This was when they decided it was time to flip the script, and start doing things their own way…

To find out what happens next check back for Rasmus’ History Part III on the blog!

Chloe, Blake, and Marie at the Hawk 'n' Dove's Final Friday Happy Hour!

Our team visited the Hawk ‘n’ Dove, the oldest Irish Bar in DC this past Friday to get people excited about the auction that already love the Hawk ‘n’ Dove! Marie, Blake, and Chloe walked around with their handy dandy iPad talking to patrons and letting them know that they could be the proud owner of anything from the very bar stool that they were sitting on to the Hawk ‘n’ Dove flag out front.We love meeting our customers and letting them know about what we can do for them!

Thanks to everyone that was there and we look forward to seeing you all again in the future, possibly at the Hawk ‘n’ Dove inspection which is this Thursday from 10am-4pm! To check out and bid on the Hawk ‘n’ Dove Auction click here!

We also want to shout out to our $100 cash drawing winner Holly Howe of Capitol Hill Day School! Congrats Holly, don’t spend it all in one place! (Or do!)

Holly Howe, Winner of the $100 Raffle from Rasmus Auctioneers!