I went to my first 2 auctions today here in Central Florida

Today I went to 2 auctions. A total of 15 units and 2 vehicles went.
Only saw 2 really good ones, and 3 possible good ones
The 2 good units had almost an entire small restaurant worth of equipment, tables, booths, soda dispenser,and several beer kegs.
One unit went for 1100 the other for 500. The same buyer( a whale).

This same whale dropped a possible good room on someone.
The room had some value from what I could see.( 4 decent car rims, power tools, and some household item)
The whale stayed quiet till the bid hit 600, then he bid 800 really quick and walked away.
The lady who had bid 600 then bid 825 without thinking, then said oh sh**.
Saw another unit go for 825. It had lots of hotel room safes, 2 medium sized safes several gas bbq grills, and pool supplies.

The 2nd auction had 2 to 3 times as many people as the first, including the whale.
No bargains, people had auction fever.
I played a game with another newbie, lets guess what it goes for. I hit or was really close several times.
Watched rooms that should have gone for 4 or 5 hundred go for 800 to 1000 bucks.
Everyone wanted to leave with something I guess. It was nuts. A room with 2 junked walmart bikes and a couple of trash bags went for 150.

Today was a good learning experience for me.
Watching the game in person teaches you a lot more than watching it on TV.
Will attend a few more auctions soon.
I will not bid on a unit unless i feel I can turn a profit from it.

 

Yea wait till there is a day where there are tons of auctions going on, should thin the crowds out. Also sometimes when there are a few auctions going on at the same time I go to the less attractive one say maybe they have 2 units and the other one has 15. Most the crowd is going to be at the 15 unit auction so you might get away with a steal.

It's kind of interesting that you are all the way down in Florida and the exact same thing happens up here in Seattle.  I went on an auction run yesterday.......9 different facilities with 2-10 units for auction at each facility.  There was a great big crowd, and most of the units were selling between 600 and 1500, just like you said, it was NUTS!  Anyway, a couple of guys I know split off and went to a couple of smaller auctions.  One of my friends got a unit for 6 bucks!  I think he said the most expensive unit he saw went for 165, so what Drew says is good advice.  I typically like the smaller facilities myself, but sometimes (not always) the big franchises have better quality units (you do pay for them though!)

What I find interesting that this thread has been looked at almost 1,800 times, but only has three replies; mine from California (this post) 1 from Georgia and 1 from Washington state.

I guess Floridians don't talk much ?