Another Convention tradition is the slave auction.  People put themselves onto the auction block, the money goes to charity, and the geeks with the highest mean incomes get to hang out with good looking guys and girls.  Bragging rights go to the person who pulls in the highest winning bid and shame goes to poor sods who only manage to go for 5 dollars and sold to someone of the same gender.  I was actually foolish enough to sign up for the slave auction at the first convention I ever attended.  I figured that since I wasn't a half-bad looking guy and I actually had a personality, that someone I knew would buy me and we could get a few laughs out of it.  Sadly, I was soon to learn the cardinal rule in the slave biz... Guys sell for pennies on the dollar.  At Camalot 1, I think I may have sold for $7.50 and only got purchased after a rather evil friend of mine realized he could use me to feel superior, while his other slave purchase <Ironically, one Dawn Marie of international convention fame> made him feel pampered.  Sour Grapes aside, I have noticed that few men go for more than 15 bucks, while the women can go upwards of 500 clams at a decent convention.

Sheer dollar value aside, I've always found it confusing what one could actually GAIN from having a slave as well.  They always have the person on the auction block announce some skill or talent, but it's seldom something that would actually get used.  What good does it do to bid on a good cook, when the hotel room's equivalent of a kitchen is the electric eye on the drip coffee pot.  What are your other options?  Someone to fetch drinks?  Someone to give you a backrub?  All these are intangibles that may or may not materialize in the course of the night.  The only time I've ever felt the need to bid on slaves came at MOC two years ago, where Dawn and I purchased a comic book artist so that he could immortalize us on paper.  We look damn cool, too. We're blowing the heads off Eric Keesler and Garth Ennis... We got our money's worth.

If the purchaser is LUCKY, he might end up with an exhibitionist... if the purchasee is UNLUCKY, she'll end up with a pervert.  The odds are slim that the yins will end up with the yangs, but regardless, the auction itself is a melting pot of hopes, fears, and capitalistic fantasy.
 

My battery was running low by the time I got to the Slave Auction, so I really didn't take many pictures, but I'll give you a few highlights from what I have...

One guy listed his talent as the ability to expose himself on demand, so the call went out from some women in the back with exactly such a demand.  When Steve began to realize that he was actually going to go through with it, he started taking bids from people who wanted to keep this young buck's stallion in the stable.  A rather savage bidding war got going with a batch of young ladies in the back of the room trying to outbid a man in the front row.  Finally, the inevitable happened and out came his jolly roger.  It must have been rather disheartening for the guy when there were more laughs than gasps, but I figure his ego can handle it.  The bid was 70 or 80-something and Steve asked the girls in the back if they wanted to continue the bidding, but they declined by screaming, "We've already seen it!"

The Slave Auction always takes too long, but the entertainment value wasn't bad.... But the evening was just warming up.