Auction Hunters: Wheels and Deals

Auction Hunters: Season 2, Episode 2: “Quadzilla Attacks!”

Allen and Ton headed to Playa Vista, CA. Since it’s a town with a great beach community and lots of residents with expendable income, the guys hoped to find some exciting items inside the day’s units.

Vintage Lantern Unit

They won their first unit of the day for $250. Allen had spotted a vintage traffic lantern inside which he valued at $100. They also found several promising items which would have been worth a lot more if they hadn’t been broken, including one half of a two man lumberjack saw valued at $50 and an old western electric telephone.

Fact: Before the invention of chainsaws in 1927, crosscut saws were used to cut trees into lumber.

Allen judged the phone was from the early 1900’s because pieces from it were made from Bakelite. Since it was missing it’s receiver it was only worth about $60 instead of $400 – $600.

Fact: “Bakelite “was the first synthetic plastic, created in 1907.

The rest of the room seemed pretty worthless, being full of old boxes, a lamp, a couple of cases, a baseball bat and some clothes. But as they loaded everything into their truck Ton accidently broke a small cabinet and they discovered a pouch inside. When they unzipped it, they found a Derringer revolver from the early 1900’s and a Squeezer Cocker.

Fact: A “Squeeze Cocker” is a trigger-less gun designed to fire with a single squeeze.

They took the guns to their expert Blaze, and tried them out on the range. Both of them fired and Blaze bought them off them for $600.

Fact: The “Squeeze Cocker” or “Assassins’ Pistol” has an effective range of only 10 feet.

Quad Room

The second room they won, Allen wasn’t so sure about but Ton saw what looked like a quad under a tarp and got excited so they took the room for $1000.

The room was full of air compressors, helmets, fenders, an old generator, boots, wheels and various tools. When they lifted the tarp they discovered a Quadzilla, a vehicle made between 1987-1990 that had more horsepower than any other ATV in its time. It stopped being made after too many people got hurt while driving it.

Ton spotted some sediment in the fuel tank and was concerned the motor could be shot, which would have made the quad worth a whole lot less. Since the quad was in pieces, they had to put it back together before they could see if it ran.

Fact: Honda created the first three-wheel ATVs in 1970.

Once it was in one piece again, Ton got on and tried to start. It took several goes, but it eventually came to life.

They took it to Tony an ATV specialist friend of Ton’s. When the decided to take it for a test drive they once again had trouble starting it. Allen whispered to Ton how important it was to get it going. Maybe he should have told it to the quad, since Ton was already doing everything he could.

Thankfully it finally came to life and Ton took it for a spin. They haggled with Tony, and he finally agreed to pay them $2900 for it.

Ton and Allen also managed to sell a few of the other items from the unit. They made $180 off the helmets from the unit, the fenders went for $100 and they found $1000 worth of tools.