Last week's announcement of a 100-car donation by Jack Anderson has drawn worldwide attention to Olds College.
An article published by a Canadian newswire service about the donation was picked up by major U.S. newspapers, including the Wall Street Journal, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Denver Post, the Houston Chronicle and the Sacramento Bee. Moreover, Yahoo! Finance and German website Finanz Nachrichten also published the article on their front pages.
"A lot of publications that have picked this up, either on the front page or the E section, have been financial and marketwatch newspapers, which speaks to the demographics of who might be the buyers, the high-rollers and risk-takers,î said Jordan Cleland, vice-president of advancement at Olds College.
"They are the ones that might have the income to bid on vintage cars like this.î
In Canada, the article was picked up by the Montreal Gazette, the Regina Leader-Post and the Vancouver Sun.
"It got picked up on television, with CTV both out of Edmonton and Calgary,î said Cleland.
The interest in the auction is so strong that the college has already started fielding calls from prospective buyers and interested auctioneers, even though the auction is not scheduled to take place before spring or summer 2013.
Anderson, a Calgary-area businessman, has been collecting vintage cars all his life. In 2007, he made a $1-million donation to the college, without restriction on its use. Last year, during an interview for the upcoming Olds College centennial book, Anderson first talked about giving away his car collection to the institution. The collection is valued at more than $2 million.
"We thought the donation news would be highly compelling, which it has proven to be,î said Cleland.
"We thought to strategically let our news get out there and we will maybe quite deliberately sit back and wait for the phone to ring, to see who is interested in working with us, as opposed to go to somebody and ask them.î
This way, Cleland believes that Olds College will be able to bargain from a position of strength.
"We think that this is so noteworthy and there is such an obvious volume, with 100 vehicles, there might be an opportunity for somebody to say ëWell, we will reduce our regular commission for the opportunity to work with Olds College on that,'î he said.
"It might be that we might want to decide our auction partners through a competitive process, like issue a request for proposals. We are still in the planning stages for the auction.î
Also in the planning stage is the list of cars that the college will get.
"The issue is that Jack Anderson has about 130 cars. We are getting 100 of them,î said Cleland.
"I think he is somewhere between two-thirds and three-quarters of his way through the list of which cars we get.î
Olds College intends to take the next 15 months to finalize all the auction details.
"It is a great opportunity and we are going to make sure that we take the time to do the planning on that properly,î said Cleland.
