The second annual Signature Sale was held on April 4, 2009. Sale organizers Jim and Jenny Taylor began this event based on the need for an annual spring sale of quality Morgan consignments to meet the needs of sellers and buyers. The venue was The Champions Center in Springfield, Ohio that features stabling, warm up and the sale arena all under one roof. The location was also centrally located for buyers and sellers who came from the West Coast to the southeast to New England as well as the Midwest. Through widespread advertising and promotion of the Signature Sale, an outstanding group of proven show horses from a variety of divisions, prospects and broodmares were consigned to the sale.
The evening prior to the Signature Sale featured Todd Woodruff’s Consignment Tack Auction. The Signature Sale festivities began on Saturday morning with a brunch in the beautifully transformed sale arena. Hundreds of people gathered to chat about the sale, the news of the off-season and the prospects for the upcoming show season.
The sale kicked off with pedigree-reader Bill Carrington welcoming the audience and added a few words from Jim and Jenny Taylor and introduced auctioneer Walt Robertson and his ring men to the crowd. The curtain then rose for the 67 lots consigned to the 2009 Signature Sale.
When the final gavel fell, the Signature Sale featured a healthy overall average of over $3,550 with 90 percent of the consigned horses sold. The top-five average was $15,900 with the top 10 coming in at $11,300. The sale toppers at $21,000 were a tie between two highly promising youngsters. John Suprenaut placed the winning bid on the well-named yearling filly Stonecroft Delightful. The filly sired by Stonecroft Masquerade and out of Century Suite City Woman was bred and consigned by Stonecroft Farm. Luman Wadhams signed the ticket for the co-sale topper in the impressive two-year-old chestnut colt Bri-B Crystalpiece. The full brother to Grand National Champion Bri-B XTC was bred and consigned by Brian Stewart.
The Brown/Klein family added a pair of top-five sellers with agent Lynn Peeples placing the bids on the third highest seller Stonecroft Odyssey at $18,000 and JW Nobella at $9,500. Odyssey, a three-year-old bay full brother to TRE Master Of Disguise, and Nobella, a broodmare by Nobility and out of Miss Bluegrass, were consigned by Stonecroft Farm. The fourth highest seller Motivated Ms. earned a bid of $10,000 from Karen Randall-Kristal on the winning seven-year-old Man In Motion daughter consigned by Alex and Deborah Cojocar.
The Signature Sale certainly met its goal of offering a spring consignment sale for quality entries meeting the needs of consignors and buyers. The sale was professionally run in a perfectly suited venue.
Following the sale, Jim and Jenny Taylor offered this assessment, "The 2009 Signature Sale was another step forward toward our goal to create a marketplace that is of value to the seller and the buyer of Morgan horses. We were very pleased with the quality of our consignments this year and would like to thank our consignors and their agents for presenting the horses in such a professional manner. A special thank you and best of luck to all our new owners."