Quarter auction to benefit golf scholarship

A quarter used to buy a two-pound bag of apples and a five-pound bag of flour back in the 1940s, but now it doesn’t buy much. The Pahrump Valley Youth Golf Founders Club will bring back the buying power of the quarter for one night with its annual quarter auction on April 30 at the Grill Room at Mountain Falls.

After a one-year absence, the Founders Club will bring back the auction by popular demand. This will be the 21st auction.

The club supports the high school golf teams, middle school golf teams, the junior golf program and a golf scholarship fund. The organization gives out a $5,000 scholarship and a $1,000 scholarship each year. The success of the auction is due to the amount of prizes donated to the auction by local businesses and of course, people showing up.

The last auction was in 2014 and the organizers thought they were hanging it up. People started asking about it, said Trojans golf coach Bob Hopkins and they just couldn’t refuse.

“People told me that they wanted the fund to keep going,” Hopkins said. “So we got the people back together and we will be holding it at Mountain Falls, which is a new location.”

Hopkins said he got involved with the auction in 1998 and it had been going for three years. He said it started with Larry Goins, a former Trojans golf coach and Trojans athletic director.

According to Goins, it started when his son was involved with junior golf.

“You are asking me to go back a long way,” Goins explained. “How we got started was the Southern Nevada Junior Golf Association did a quarter auction while our son was playing. All the coaches got together, Hopkins, Floyd and Giannotti and decided to go for it. The first year we made $3,500 and we thought it was the best thing ever. Well, after this Friday night we will have raised $250,000 doing this 20 times.”

The auction is pretty simple. It costs a quarter to bid on a prize and when the quarter is bid the person gets a number and if that number is chosen that person wins that prize.

“There will be 160 prizes and people can win a 40-inch TV for a quarter,” Goins said.

Much of the auction efforts each year go into the college scholarships given out. Hopkins said to get the scholarship you just need to apply.

“The only criteria to win the scholarship is that you have to have participated in one of the programs that we sponsor,” he said.

The auction is expected to generate at least $15,000 for scholarships and funding the golf programs.

Doors open at 6 p.m. and the auction starts at 7 p.m. For more info contact Bob and Sarah Hopkins at 775- 910-9409. Tickets are $60, which includes admission and prize bids.