Mountains of stuff – minus one ring – will be up for grabs.

One thing you won’t find at this weekend’s Rotary Auction and Rummage Sale: a U.S. Merchant Marine Academy ring, Class of 1965.

How such a treasure slipped into the mad flux of auction items by mistake, then found its way back to its rightful owner before it could be whisked away by a buyer, is one of the more unusual stories to come out of an event that produces more than its share of tall tales.

But fret not. Even without the ring, bargain hunters will find plenty of everything else at the annual Rotary fund-raiser, which begins Friday evening and resumes Saturday morning.

Yes, plenty.

“We’ve been slammed,” said Joanne Ellis, this year’s auction chair. “This has been the most active first three days of the auction we’ve ever had.”

Scheduling issues meant that Rotarians didn’t wind up with control of the auction site at Woodward Middle School until the middle of last week, so donations are being compressed into an unusually short period.

Even so, the volume of donated items – furniture, clothing, kitchenware and hardware, sporting goods, arts and crafts, electronics and a Jell-O mold shaped like a human brain – is flowing through in unprecedented numbers.

“It’s going really good,” Rotarian Charlie Frame said, during a pause for lunch Monday afternoon. “Really good.”

While the layout is generally unchanged, there are some notable tweaks that make this year’s auction and rummage truly a two-day event.

The live auction and merchant silent auction will take place Friday evening during the rummage preview, with concessions also available.

That leaves Saturday as an all-rummage affair, although rare and particularly high-quality items will still be the subject of silent-auction bid sheets throughout the morning.

After a down year for vehicle contributions in 2004, the car lot is heavy with perhaps two dozen cars and vans. These include a 1978 postal Jeep; “Vannie,” a cream-colored, 1979 Ford Econoline donated by the family of a prominent island dentist; a Lincoln Continental, 1990s vintage; and a pair of Mercedes diesels, one dating to 1981, the other a 1978 model imported by the original owner.

At the lower end of the spectrum is a 1994 Dodge Caravan that came with an unusual option – a hornet’s nest under the dashboard, which car lot organizer Don Mannino discovered while he was in the driver’s seat.

And then there’s the 1987 BMW 325i, which will need a little TLC from a skilled mechanic.

“It looks wonderful,” Mannino said, “but it sounds like rocks in a 55-gallon drum rolling down a hill. It sounds like the Anvil Choir in there.”

But every pot finds a lid, and every car finds its way off the lot by the end of the auction.

Actually, because of a change in the federal tax code, a number of the vehicles were donated before the calendar had turned over from 2004.

That left Rotarians scrambling to find places to park them for the six months leading up to the auction, and even a rival service club stepped forward.

“A lot of very nice people, including a Kiwanian, stored vehicles for us all over the island,” Mannino said.

A row of sail and power boats of all sizes is another testament to the trove to have emerged from island garages over the past few days. Of course, those who’ve been to the auction will already understand; for those who haven’t, comprehension is, as Ellis notes, “experiential.”

What won’t be auctioned off, though, is that ring.

It seems that former islander and current Kingston resident Gary Schmidt is undertaking a change of address, and hired movers for portage of belongings that he kept in a storage locker.

The leftovers were supposed to go to the auction, but only after the items had been sifted through.

They hadn’t. So auction volunteers were surprised when such an unusually valuable memento turned up in their hands.

They contacted the Merchant Marines, who traced the ring back to the graduate to whom it had been awarded.

That was Schmidt, who was surprised to learn that the ring and other keepsakes had been carted to the auction by mistake.

Monday, he raced to the auction site and joined Ellis in tracking it all back down.

The ring’s final disposition?

“It’s on my finger,” Schmidt said, “and it’s not coming off.”

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Good stuff

The 45th annual Rotary Auction and Rummage begins with a live auction, merchant silent auction and rummage preview 6-9 p.m. Friday. The giant rummage sale runs 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday.

Donations will be accepted through 5 p.m. Thursday at Woodward Middle School.