An unknown, would-be buyer put in the high bid of $75,000 on Boothbay's Coburn House on October 18. But negotiations were still to follow, meaning the circa 1870s bed-and-breakfast may or may not have its new owner.

Poe Cilley from Carleton Realty in Wiscasset and Bath made the high bid. She said she was there representing someone. She declined to say who.

Auctioneer Stefan Keenan of Keenan Auction Company said he could not identify the afternoon's bidders.

Unless someone goes public, whoever is behind the bid may remain a mystery a while longer. If the sale goes through, at the $75,000 or some other price, it will come out in a deed at the Lincoln County Registry of Deeds, Keenan said.

When bidding stood at $65,000, Keenan stepped away to meet with a representative for the Bank of Maine, which owns the Coburn House. When he returned, he announced the $65,000 did not meet the bank's reserve bid, and that the bank reserved the right to negotiate with the high bidder.

After Cilley bid the $75,000, a man who had made some of the lower bids asked if the reserve bid could be revealed.

It could not, Keenan said.

The same man then asked, if talks failed with the high bidder, would the bank negotiate with the second-highest one.

“I don't know what they'll do...We're here today to cut the deal,” Keenan said. “That's what we're trying to do.”

When no one bettered Cilley's bid, Keenan ended the auction and told other bidders he'd be giving them back their $10,000 deposits.

The man who had asked the questions revealed only that he lives in Sidney.

Bidding started slowly Friday. The town of Boothbay has valued the property at $387,300, Keenan told bidders and onlookers at the former Davis Island Grill in Edgecomb. The restaurant was earlier planned to be part of the auction, along with two attached condominiums. But it turned out they lacked an “as-built” floor plan at the Registry of Deeds, Keenan said.

“We're very fortunate to have found out before we sold it to somebody,” he said. Title insurance would require that documentation, in order to avoid a dispute if there was a fire, he said.

Those three Edgecomb properties could go up for auction relatively soon, possibly in two weeks or a month, Keenan said before moving on to the Coburn House bidding.

He suggested bidding start at $200,000, then $175,000. At early bids of $25,000 and $30,000, he said, “We haven't even bought the land yet...A long way from home here, folks.”

Later in the bidding, Keenan talked up the property. “A gateway to Boothbay, nice opportunity...a lot of frontage.”

In one of his last attempts, Keenan asked the man who said he was from Sidney, “Did I mention it's only money?”

Two days earlier, the Boothbay Planning Board granted an extension for the Coburn House to operate as a bed-and-breakfast, Keenan said.

Edgecomb developer Tony Casella had said recently he planned to bid on the property and make it a single rental unit for families coming to the area for weddings.

In the Davis Isand Grill parking lot after the auction, Casella said he decided against trying to buy the Coburn House after attending a preview. Doing what he wanted with it would have taken more money than he was willing to put into it, he said.

Susan Johns can be reached at 207-844-4633 or susanjohns@wiscassetnewspaper.com