There are lots of auctions going on locally this week, two today, one tomorrow, and one friday.  I went to the first one this morning which was at a Uhaul location.  They had 2 units for auction, a 10x10, and a 5x5x4.  It was run by the employees of the location, which usually I like because there's usually smaller crowds and cheaper prices.  The crowd part was accurate. 6 bidders, 2 looky-loos (2 older ladies that were clearly influenced by the TV shows)  Anyway, as we're walking to the first unit (the 10x10) the woman running the auction announces that there is a minimum bid that they must get for this unit.  OK, never really heard them charging a minimum reserve bid before, but whatever.  She opens the door on the 10x10 and it's only about half full, neatly stacked cardboard boxes, some stuff on top that's open, looks like craft supplies, I see some fabric, and one side is piled with garbage bags that look like clothes/bedding.  Then she announces that the bidding must start at $700.   WHAT?! 
There were 2 other guys there besides myself that I consider auction regulars around here, and the three of us kind of looked at each other, then one guy asks 'where's the next unit?'  The 2 older ladies I mentioned earlier were like 'how do you know what's in there?'  needless to say, it was a 'no sale'  One kinda funny note, before she shut the door, the employee asked 'does anyone want to throw out any offer?'  I said 'yeah, 5 bucks' which she didn't seem to appreciate, and one of the 2 older ladies said to me 'but then you'd have to clean all that out of there?'  I just smiled and told her that's what I do.

So we go to the 5x5, again, minimum bid: $300.  The employee kept apologizing saying she was only doing what she was told to do, etc.  The 5x5 looked better, I could see a couple of computers, and I saw some newer Gi Joe toys which caught my interest.  One of the other regulars said he could offer $100, which I thought would have been fair for the room, but again it was turned down.  She did mention something about the bids being a percentage of what was owed, and what they wanted to recoup...but that just seems wrong, like get the stuff out at whatever cost and start renting it again to someone else.  At the end, they did tell us that they were looking into working with an auctioneer for future sales, so maybe they'll get it together later, but they didn't seem to know what they were doing at this one.
waste of time, hopefully the rest of the auctions this week will be better.

has anyone else run into this extreme minimum bid scenario?