The Boothbay Harbor Rotary Club held its 59th summer auction and flea market on Saturday, Aug. 6 at the Boothbay Common.

In addition to the live auction, the event included a silent auction, boutique, flea market, lawn and garden tool sale, and book mart.

“It takes hundreds of volunteers and hundreds of hours, weeks and months to put on this charity,” said volunteer auctioneer Bob Foster, who has called the live auction for the last 24 years.

“It takes a lot of coordination,” said event chairman Tom Churchill.

Auction items are collected all year. The club is in the process of erecting its own storage unit near its clubhouse on Red Hawk Ridge, he said.

The new facility will allow donors to deliver items on Saturday mornings, said Churchill.

Working the event were 75 volunteers including high school students and five Coast Guardsmen.

After the live auction, sold items have to be purchased and picked up, unsold flea market items packed up and the tents dismantled and removed. 

“There are thousands of books,” said Churchill now in his third year as the event coordinator.

Churchill said any books left unsold are collected by Big Hearted Books of Boston and donated to schools, prisons and halfway houses.

“By five o’clock this will all be gone,” said former event chairman Henry Wyatt.

“It is all going back to the community,” said Wyatt. All proceeds go to 16 nonprofits and scholarship funds. He said the event has exceeded its goals for each of the last three years. 

Rotary President Tony Curulla said Sunday that once all the credit card receipts are tallied the club hoped to equal or exceed the $55,000 raised in 2015.

“You don’t know what you will find at a Rotary auction, but it is always fun,” said buyer Mark Howard of Boothbay and New York City.