This could have been a record-breaker. Dave's fear-mongering scared a lot of them away.

Jayz:
I don't fear monger without cause. We will never know for this round. Have to wait to see if there is a round 2. For the others who did not spend their money there were at least a couple of big issues with this one.
a) As commented elsewhere a number of material CRA claims as noted by Elvis. My estimate was a six hundred thousand plus dollars including bid, minimum exposure would be needed. I don't keep that hunk of change sitting around. Maybe that is why some people I know of attract beautiful Chinese girls.
b) The second one is an unusual title situation where you could own the property but not have use of it because of a life interest agreement on title. Whether this gets swept away on a tax sale I got conflicting advice and decided not to spend the money to resolve the situation.
In principal I dislike throwing large sums of money at a single throw of the dice. I will let the big punters on the board go after the snow whites and I will stick to the seven dwarfs.
Too bad would have made an interesting bid meeting. Love to be a fly on the wall when the treasurer opened the mailed in bids to return the deposit checks.
This one also required unusual information searching to get initial clarification of some of the risks involved. I am not prepared to disclose the particulars of that unusual research in the public domain.