Auction Scene #6...June, 2013

Hoping June will be better !

Maybe the hot weather in many parts of the country will weed out some of the folks who don't want to WORK and who just want to open that dresser drawer and find 10 gold necklaces !   

I know it's only the second day of June, but actions in my local area look to be sparse to non-existent the next two weeks. I might go out of town next week to look for some auctions. Right now I am working an estate on commission and have another possibly lined up for next week, so looks like for now I am running estate sales instead of doing storage auctions. Also am getting more people bringing me stuff to sell. Bought an over-painted dresser from a guy for $10 (I bought some other stuff he brought over too). Underneath all that paint is a Mengel Mid Century Modern dresser. Look em up.

I went to an auction yesterday in a smallish town about an hour away. 10 or so bidders for 6 rooms. I walked away with 4 for the grand total of $155.

Unit 1 - $10. Auctioneer had said the guy had died, mostly crappy stuff with a couple of bags of DVDs.
Unit 2 - $100. Laptops showing, a lot of nice woman's clothes/shoes/purses household items.
Unit 3 - $40. Nice Mattress Set, few boxes of misc
Unit 4 - $5. Nice desk, tub of clothes.

Even though I walked away with the most, I'm not so sure I walked away with the best.

Friday was my first auction in a while. Two facilities 20 units adveritsed. Total ended up being 5. Unit 1 was a 10X25 showing a couple of antique items but was a huge mess. Went for $250.00. Next unit was a 5X6 with three suitcases, one duffel bag and a trash bag. Suitcases were middle of the road type. Went for $85.00.
Next facility third unit turned out to be a surrender not a lien. Mostly broken furniture and appliances. Went for $1.00. Fourth unit was a 10X10 stuffed to the ceiling with crap. I know this mans mother and he is a dumpster diver so whoever paid the $375.00 for this unit will probibly regret it. Fifth unit was a 10X20 packed with clothes and really old mircrowaves plural. Went for $475.00.
Crowd was regular for the times. Alot of people I recognized and several that I had never seen before. 28 bid numbers were handed. None of the units went to regulars.
I would have went on the very first unit had I not had a vacation scheduled for the weekend. There was no way I was going to get it empty by the facility deadline and they are sticklers. The mortor and pestal sitting at the very front would have paid for the unit. Oh well on to the next one.

Auction day....

Started off well.  13 units up, 9 people.  Good odds.

Out of 13, seven didnt get a single bid!  Total trash, mildew.  We weren't told but our thoughts were there was a water leak, contents destroyed, settled with tenants and owner was trying to get rid of contents without having to pay for it....

Other six units weren't as bad quality wise but smelled.  All but one went for under $100.  One for $300 just because it had an old school roll way tool box.

He under $100 units were cheap furniture, liquor boxes......people bid just because they were cheap and easy clean outs with the assumption 90% is going straight to dump.

I might have bid on a gamble there was something had I brought a truck but the facility was 45 miles away.  Didnt want to drive back out on a gamble....

Another in morning just up the way.  Maybe it will be better

Went to several auctions yesteray (June 19, 2013) and crowds were decent with newbies outnumbering regulars about 2 to 1. Each group won some lockers.

Locker counts typically about 5 per location with maybe 3 of those being junk and the other two good enough to go in the $300 range.

Saw Leota and her husband at a couple of them. They were smiling at the prices a couple of the lockers sold for....smiling in disbelief. 

Went to some more auctions....three.  Decent crowd, semi-decent lockers. Nothing jumped out at me as being exciting. I bid on a 5 x 5 that I would have been happy with for $100 (in my area). I went to $125 comfortably but then took a 3 month newbie up and let him have it at $180. It was clean and full, but after $125 I wasn't interested.

One 10 x 30 looked good with a big (wheeled) gizmo at the back that we figured out was a concrete pump! I thought it probably sold new for $8,000 or so and that getting $3K for it wouldn't be too hard (if it worked). There were also several good looking sets of golf clubs, some opened suitcases, a 40" or so flatscreen, a 7' tall, four wall dog kennel about 6' square or so. Overall, some definite possibilities for profit.

Started out slow enough, $100 or so but then two guys (both friends of mine) took it up to $600 pretty fast. I was holding back as the concrete thing was out of my area, but both of these guys handle equipment so why not let them have it.  Friend #1 got it for the $600.....was wondering why friend #2 was "bidding him up", but I told him that he wasn't, he just wanted it. Hard to take logic into account when in the heat of the bidding. We all bid up newbies and "hogs" who want them all. Our bidding up generally only goes as high as we would be willing to pay, but in some cases we "zing" the other guy to teach him a lesson or deplete his funds for the rest of the day.

Anyway, as others are headed to the office, we go into the locker (yeah, I know, it's a no-no, but oh, well).  Got a good look at the main goodies and locked it up.  Get to office...THERE'S A PROBLEM !

The legal  ad was 3 days short of being legal...had to cancel the sale!  After the big disappointment the two of us talked...Friend #2 had left in a huff since he didn't get it (and didn't get that it is BUSINESS, not friendship). We decided the three of us might COLLUDE to keep the price down next time around and buy it all together and split the proceeds...that's if no other buyers get involved....if they do, it's anyone's ball game.

Yes, we know, COLLUSION is a bad thing, an illegal thing even, but so is going more than the speed limit, not feeding a parking meter, etc.  No one is being robbed at gunpoint and no one is getting beaten with a club. Ever cheat on your tax return or SPEED just to keep THE FLOW OF TRAFFIC going?   

Auctions have been slow. real slow. Which is good timing because my promo products business has picked up. But now I'm running low on stuff, except for clothes..   Time to get back out there, but very few auctions scheduled this coming week..

So we bought two units on the 18th, one the haunted house unit for $50 which I posted about elsewhere.

The first unit of the day is not a unit I generally get because some folks are superstitious about buying the first locker at a caravan.  But this one popped up, a nice couch that would look good in the shop, a dvd player that I thought was a bluray player, and a few other items caught my eye.  $300 was our limit.  And...it went up to $260.  I was very sad about that as what I could see would break even there, and not leave much room for profit-and given prices later I know I was bid up heavily.  That being said...under a piece of clothing...a expresso machine.  $300 new, $100 in the shop.  The couch was as nice as we thought $100, a 14mp digital camera new-$80...$30 in the shop.  a case of dvd's...$2 each for $40 (and another 20 we are keeping to watch lol).  Then some REALLY nice clothing.  A small desktop gumball machine.  Other various things still to be discovered as we go through things.  About one box of photos and personal papers returned to office.  I hope he picks them up.  Overall...a break even unit I think.  We shall see as I go through more. 

A small tool unit showed up, we put our limit at $300, but unfortunately only had enough cash on us for $200.  It went for 225.

A unit with a very large safe, and a business sign.  We passed on it.  In retrospect we should have big some for the safe as it was a very nice safe, and the sign might have been worth something either as scrap or to the right buyer.  But..it went for more then we would have been willing to pay.  I think $400?

A locker...with a small suitcase and a box....We were willing to toss $25 at it...but a bidding war between two folks got it up to $85.  WTH?  Really?  Yup.

A locker with a old crt computer monitor and a bunch of...well..it looked like trash.  Our limit-$10 to indulge our curiosity.  We bid, one of the regulars bid $15...and...then begged someone to bid on it again.  As we walked off I told him we dropped the locker on him.  LOL.  Pretty friendly guy later chatted with him the next day and he said it was all trash except for one thing that he hoped to get $...15 for.  Course thats not counting dump fees.  Apparently it was a meth dealer who got evicted for selling meth to his neighbor according to the paperwork.  At $10 I was willing to gamble.  Not at $15.

A...We called it the cat unit.  It had some misc stuff, and three large cat structures.  I wanted it for our cats...but wife shot the idea down saying who knows what our cats could catch.  In the end...no one bid on it, and it went unsold. 

Oh..and there was another 10 units or so going that day at other locations, but we called it because...well..we bought 3,600 cubic feet of haunted house, we were at our limit capacity wise.  Yeah I could have hit the bank and kept going...but...we owned a haunted house.  That is way too much stuff already!

Was told some nice units showed up later on down the line, but had too much I needed to do to go to them. 

I can say with confidence the crowds are definitely down. Lower then they've been since the TV shows. Few newbies coming out, & many of the 1-2 year newbie have stopped coming out and many of the old timers have quit too. Prices have come down some, but not as much as the crowd. Right the the remaining old timers & 1 year newbies are battling it out trying to establish themselves as big dogs or big dogs again. This behavior is keeping the prices on the high side, but I am managing to win units at prices I am comfortable with. (well, some what. I think prices need to come down some more to really ensure profitability).

The challenges never end. Although crowds & prices have come down, the sales have nosedived in my area over the last month & were slower then normal through Spring.