This has only happened a couple of times in 7 years of auction buying.

Today I attended an abandoned house auction and there were only 5 of us there. Actually, there was a married couple, me and two guys who were together, so I think that might count as 3 bidders.

First, the house. Walked into this home from the 1940s and was almost overwhelmed with the cat piss smell.
Walked right through the living dining area and out the back door. Nothing in the rooms I walked through worth buying or selling....mostly empty with some trash left over from the abandonment. When I came back through the bedrooms were empty too.

Went into the cellar through the old, angled basement door and down some steps. This house was built about 6 feet off the ground with a barely walkable space underneath for about 10 feet in by 10 feet wide, then it tapered up to about a 4 foot crawl space. Saw a couple of old things here, but nothing special.

Out to the back yard shed, a bldg about 12 by 20 about 18" deep in trash. Did see an old fake fireplace front with 5 pieces of nice porcelain flowers on top. Looked at bottom and they were made in Italy, but I couldn't make out the mfg name. Also saw an old cash register, smaller, greenish/wrinkled paint job. This space too smelled of cat piss.

Around the side of the house piles and piles of old wood. Basically, I wasn't interested, but thought I would see how it went.

******

Auctioneer told us we could take what we wanted and leave the rest behind...no kidding; no one would have bought it otherwise. Anyway, he started it at $50 and the two guys didn't say boo but the couple did. I went up with them in $5 increments until we were both tired of the $5 jumps and one of us said $100, then $125 and so on. Auctioneer couldn't believe it...he would have gone in 5s all day.  So, we went up to $300 and I stopped and couple took it for $325.

If the 5 porcelains sell for $50 apiece and the cash register for $100 or so they'll be even and then whatever else they find. I would have liked it (and lived with the odor) for $150 to $200, but after that it was pushing it.

So, another bust, but I got some good work done around the house today ! 

Feel free to add stories of SMALLEST CROWD I EVER SAW !

I check out the new members periodically and ONE of the things I have noticed is this....a fair number of them have
a particular "twist" to their names. Here's an example"



bEmmettPittmanp

The "twist" I am talking about is the lowercase letter ahead of and after the main name. This seems odd to me and
I wonder if it isn't some automatic name being generated somewhere, somehow.

A couple of these folks have no apparent email address or web address, but several of them are from the UK.

Is this just one or more people using some "bot" to radomly generate memberships, or are these people really
interested in auction storage buying and selling?

Anyone have knowledge of such things?

For those of you who sell at flea markets.....how often do you run into this?

Fellow comes up, spends a minute or two looking at a small item and then asks how much it is.
When told a dollar, he looks a few more minutes (how much looking does a brass water nozzle take?) and then says he'll take it. Do I have a bag? Sure. I get a bag put it in the bag and he takes out his wallet, pulls out a $100 bill.

No thank you; even if I have the change I won't do it. This is just plain dumb behavior on anyone's part (the $100 bill).

Subsequently, most of the time now (unless I know the buyer) I won't pull out a bag until payment has been made. Seeing me not move, they sometimes ask "do you have a bag?" to which I reply "Sure I'll get that for you in just a minute" and I wait for them to produce the cash. Sometimes a $20 will come out for a $1 item, sometimes a $50. The fifty is a no-no.

The other take on this money exchange is the person who buys a $5 item and commences to retreive a plastic baggy full of loose change.  Quarters, not so bad, but $3 in dimes and nickels. Sometimes I tell them no. I don't sell anything for less than a dollar and I have no need for loose change. If I ask $2 and someone offers me $1, I will sometimes counter with $1.50, but "only if you have change, because I don't have any coins."

May sound petty, but hey, working for dimes and nickels....I don't need the money THAT badly.

Anytime there's a new member popping up I take a quick look at their profile.

I have done this enough to see the following:

Unusual alphabet combinations for names
email addresses that end in the following   @jocurimultiplayeronline.com

I have a feeling some of these folks are going to rise up and the spam is going to fly like crazy.

Another giveaway that these folks are not for real are the occasional links in their sig lines or elsewhere (in their profiles) that lead to generic web based information pages about a variety of topics.

I'm telling you that a large number of recent (last couple of weeks) members are phoney as all get out...of course this is only my opinion. Your opinion may be different.

We continue our monitoring of crowds and prices in April.

Didn't want to start this on April Fool's Day....there will be enough jokes that day ! 

I have a friend who visited Florida for a couple of weeks and he told me about two auctions he went to.

These were in Gulfport. The first one was not a chain but rather a small independent. He didn't say the name.
There a 10 x 20 came up and looked good with two scuba tanks, a speargun showing as well as a good lookig frig and boxes. The auctioneer said the opening bid would be $200. There were 5 people there including my friend and no one bid so it was closed up. That one would have gone for $700 or more here in central CA.

The next one was a 10 x 30 and the auctioneer said the opening bid on that would be $300. One guy did that and got it. It had large wood tools (table,saw etc) and quantity of woods. That one would have gone high in CA too.

Then he went to Public Storage auctions and the crowd and prices were high. Just goes to show IF, repeat IF, you can find those small spots the odds go way up.

This one sold for $275 !