IGLOO SOLD: Daniel Andrew and partner Prita Rajathurai hand over a cheque for $320 to SPCA marketing manager Raina Roberts.
THE Christchurch igloo that was auctioned on Trade Me to raise money for the Canterbury SPCA has been sold for $320.
The top bidder was Christchurch born, Brisbane based online boutique owner, Haley Andrew, who won the auction on Friday.
She says she regularly contributes to charities and it was a personal decision to bid on the auction, which she came across on Facebook.
“It’s something very important to me as I realise I am very fortunate and do all I can to help others.”
The Trade Me user who placed the auction, Daniel Andrew (above), is thrilled with the amount of attention for the SPCA the igloo auction has generated.
“I envisaged maybe $50 and a couple of hundred views but over 15,000 views and $320 was a great result,” Mr Andrew says.
“As well as the money, I see it as good exposure for the SPCA and even had people make smaller donations as a result of this.”
Unfortunately, the igloo did not make it to out of Christchurch. Mr Andrew said after some birthday drinks for his partner Prita, their sober driver crashed into it.
“[It] was a spectacular way to finish it off,” he says.
Ms Andrew had no plans to get the igloo to Brisbane and did not know it had been crashed into until she was contacted by NewsWire.
“That’s really funny,” she said. “I wanna refund! That’s a shame, but it’s all in the name of charity – it’s not all about the igloo.”
EARLIER STORY
August 19: AN igloo made in Christchurch by people who have taken advantage of the late winter snowfall is being auctioned on Trade Me to raise money for SPCA.
Licensed commercial property consultant Daniel Andrew (above) and partner Prita Rajathurai came up with the idea to build an igloo for fun on Tuesday after Monday’s heavy snowfall.
“My partner got a bit excited on Monday when it snowed,” Mr Andrew says. “It was just for fun, but after it was finished we thought we should do something with it, otherwise it would be a waste.”
The igloo has grabbed the attention of Trade Me users as well as the SPCA, who have never heard of a fundraiser like this before.
Canterbury SPCA marketing manager Raina Roberts had not heard about it until she was contacted by Newswire, but she was very happy to find out about it.
“We often don’t know that something like this is going on and people just bring stuff in. But this is very cool,” she says.
“We would love to see more people take initiative and do more things like this.”
The SPCA has since contacted Mr Andrew and has arranged to be onsite this afternoon when the auction ends for a photo-shoot of the transaction –“with one of those cheesy giant cheques to sign”, says the auction page.
Mr Andrew said the igloo took a number of family and friends about 36 hours to build and maintain. They shared a candle-lit lunch together inside on Tuesday.
“It took eight hours to build, plus I spent four hours (Wednesday) night packing more snow onto it, hoping it will last until Friday. The snow’s gone now, but [the igloo] is pretty much frozen because it’s so cold.
“We had four people in there for a cuppa tea and some telly (Wednesday) night. But you could probably fit five.”
Mr Andrew said he has no previous igloo-building experience and when he and Ms Rajathurai searched how to build an igloo on Youtube, they saw that many had structural frames.
“[The one’s we saw] had frames. They were cheating. We used knives, but that’s how they’re built. We didn’t use any framing or anything.”
Mr Andrew hopes to raise $300 to $400 by the time the auction closes at 1.30pm today.
The top bidder will receive a colour TV as well as igloo, and Mr Andrew says he will throw in a bag of Pascal Eskimos at his own expense. Inspections are welcome, says his ad.
At the time of writing, the auction had reached a top bid of $225 and received more than 15,000 page views.
