Everything had to go, absolutely everything.
"Put it this way," the auctioneer announced to the crowd. "We'll sell you this plastic tote full of Christmas decorations we just found. Who will pay $3 for it?"
Hands shot up.
A crowd of people sat in the Fifth Quarter restaurant on Quarrier Street on Saturday morning for the last time. Instead of ordering a meal with friends and family, they tried to outbid each other for the restaurant's furniture and equipment - a little bit of history. At the end of May, the restaurant's owners closed its doors after 35 years of business.
On Saturday, a crowd of more than 100 people sat for hours listening to an auctioneer speed through a list of everything it takes to run a restaurant.
Several people there were aspiring or already successful restaurateurs. They used the auction as a chance to stock up on cheap equipment.
Vickie Stowers came to honor the restaurant she loves.
Stowers, now the proud owner of that plastic tote stuffed full of Christmas decorations, sat off to the side of the room with Kelly Young. They arrived at the auction a little later than everyone else, so they weren't able to score a prime seats.
Young said she and Stowers, both 53 years old and best friends since they met in first grade, like to go to these sort of events to scavenge for cheap things to turn into gifts for their friends.
"Oh, you're going to want to buy that," Stowers at one point whispered to Young. She just came back into the main auction room after sneaking away to look at a collection of glassware that would be auctioned off next.
"Oh yeah? And how much am I going to want to spend on it?" Young asked.
The two women erupted into laughs and sipped tall cups of frozen coffee from Panera. They were not professional auction-goers like some others there, but they were just as determined. Stowers said she and Young use to go to auctions like this almost every weekend. "But we figured that was too expensive," Stowers said.
While others came for plates, bowls and cooking equipment, Laura Plotkin and her husband Mark Plotkin came for art.
About five years ago, Laura Plotkin started collecting the works of William D. Goebel, a West Virginian artist. Many of Goebel's works are drawings of well-known buildings across the state, like the state Capitol and Woodburn Hall at West Virginia University.
The couple says they probably have more than a hundred of Goebel's creations - but when they got an email from Crowder Auctions (the group hosting the event) that showed Goebel's work up for bid, they couldn't resist.
Even though she's happy to welcome the new additions to her collection, Laura Plotkin wishes Fifth Quarter didn't have to go down in the process.
"Oh, the food," she said, clutching her chest. "I said to Mark, I said, 'Where am I going to get my prime ribs now? And my French onion soup?' See now I'm getting myself hungry."
Along the prints, the couple also walked away with arms full of pewter bowls the restaurant use to serve salads in. Mark Plotkin remembers how the restaurant would freeze the bowls before setting them out on the salad bar, keeping the salad fresh and cool for longer.
The pewter bowls went fast. There were more than a hundred of them up for bid, and the auctioneer started spitting out prices. Dozens of cards flew up in the air at one time, everyone trying to be the first.
"That's how you spend a lot of money," Laura Plotkin said. "It goes so fast and you don't have a lot of time to make a decision. All of a sudden, you realize you just spent a lot of money.
"Let's put it this way, I was lucky Mark wasn't here when the Goebel prints sold."
Reach Jake Jarvis at jake.jarvis@wvgazettemail.com, 304-348-7939 or follow @NewsroomJake on Twitter.