Auction Scene #6...June, 2012

June is here...and a good thing too. May seemed to be a little slow in several parts of the country. Maybe June will pick up a bit.

Going to two auctions today...one a piece by piece and the other a place that only has two facilities with only one facility having a sale today.

The single auction is often sparsely attended so some hope there; also two major auctioneers are having out of town sales at the same hour, so that helps.

The auction I went to today only had 10 bidders (5 of us were regulars) and 10 lockers. Unfortunately (except for 3 weeks ago) when that happens it almost invariably means the lockers will be garbage.

They were. The first 4 went for $5 each mostly (maybe a $10 thrown in). One gal got 3 or 4, a newbie got 4...the most expensive one was one HE bought and it was a 10 x 15 that went for $40 ! (what does that tell you ?)

Oh well, there's always another auction down the line.

(the piece by piece auction I went to was also a bust...didn't bid on a thing.) 

Went to an auction on Saturday - 8 units up for bid, two were nice and I bid on them but they went to one of our "biggies" who is also a SCUBA diver friend of hubby's and he paid a little more than I thought he should (of course, a few of those bids were mine!). One had a nice assortment of decent quality items, one of which was a case that the men were convinced was a gun case....I thought it was an electric guitar case. Turned out to be a guitar case...an empty one. He said he will triple his money but I think he is talkin' out his rear.

Today was the U-Haul caravan - one place had 4 units, all trash. The second had two units - one looked like someone had moved their whole garage in - including two motors and 3 car doors! It went for $950.

Tormorrow there is a piece-by- piece but since our oldest daughter is in town from Kansas to watch her sister graduate from high school, I think I will pass on everything until next week.

Oh, almost forgot....crowds were small, 10-20 people and the prices were decent!

Happy huntin' everyone!

(the piece by piece auction I went to was also a bust...didn't bid on a thing.) 

And alab is laughing............somewhere.....

Sorry to hear the lockers were junky - seems to be the trend lately - my last five facilities have been, how you say, "less than spectacular."

And alab is laughing............somewhere.....

Maybe, but he wasn't laughing when he left the forum abruptly a couple of weeks ago...even an online community can exert "peer pressure" and (IMO) he wasn't getting much support.

My guess is he's still getting a HUGE number of $5 lockers to fill that big truck...those big trucks come in handy running to the dump too !

The junk lockers can sometimes yeild good profit margin if you are willing to do the work. I think to many people want the one big item and don't want to work for the higher % of profit. A 1.00 locker that looks like crap can yeild a higher % of profit then a 3000.00 locker.

My last two lockers were 1.00 clean outs.

The first one I made 80.00 bucks before leaving the auction by selling some of the items to other auction goes. By the time all the items were sold out of that 1.00 locker I had turned 150.00 dollars and had 6 new cans of spray paint.1500% profit for 1/2 hrs work.

The second one had a bit more but still paid the 1.00 for. The old dresser that nobody wanted was packed with DVD's. and the metal head board went to scrap. By the time I was done with it all it was another 120.00 dollars, and some firewood (see old dresser).

2700% profit for some work is not bad.

While I do buy a bunch of junk/trash units and I agree with you jc14bar it's not always the case.  If I've already purchased a unit at a location, I'll buy all the under $10 junk units I can get.  If the place is on my way home from work I'll buy a junk unit.  However, if like most of the places they are not on my way home and I've not bought a unit already there I many times will pass on the units.  If there is something I want for myself sure.  If not - it's not worth the time, effort, and gas money to clean out a $1 unit for $40.  Cost me $20 per trailer load to haul trash.

First auction of the month is Friday for me.  Going to miss one location and the first of the U-haul locations due to a meeting.  Hope to get to the U-haul downtown.  They have had some decent units for a change.

Dont get me wrong, junk is junk is junk. I am just surprised how fast people shy away from a little work. The 1st locker i listed above had a bike rack for a car, an easel, a 5 foot wrecking bar, pick axe, and a 3 ft crow bar in sight. But the trash pushed people away. I got lucky at the bottom of the trash pile was a roll of garbage bags. Thank you for giving me the means to take your trash out.

Its just my .02

The junk lockers can sometimes yeild good profit margin if you are willing to do the work. I think to many people want the one big item and don't want to work for the higher % of profit. A 1.00 locker that looks like crap can yeild a higher % of profit then a 3000.00 locker.

Yes, a bigger rate of return percentage is possible with a cheap locker. Here's another way to look at the comparison for expenditure vs. return.

So there is lies teh eternal question.

Do you take a higher locker with a lower % of profit and more cash? (higer risk more reward)

or

Do you take a lower locker with a Higer % of profit, but les cash? (lower risk lower reward).

I think a nice mix of both is nice. But anything under double your money is just not worth the risk.

So there is lies teh eternal question.

Do you take a higher locker with a lower % of profit and more cash? (higer risk more reward)

or

Do you take a lower locker with a Higer % of profit, but les cash? (lower risk lower reward).

And of course we don't know the answer UNTIL we have sold the goods we have bought.

I have bought expensive lockers and (1) made good money (2) broken even (3) lost money.  I think that covers every possibility.

Luck certainly plays a part in our business and we have both GOOD and BAD from time to time. Making "good" judgements about the possibilites is a big part (IMO) of the profitabilty. The newbies lack of experience here is what makes them stop coming back if they over-invest and get a bad locker.

OH I agree,

I am a re-born newbie. I did this for years in my 20's then got a job and had a family. now that the kids are older and I am more secure I can get back into the game. Some of the regulars look at me like I am some show following newbie, but I hold my secret closer.

Now if I could just get the wife to relax on the inventory in the garage I would be great.

Yes, a bigger rate of return percentage is possible with a cheap locker. Here's another way to look at the comparison for expenditure vs. return.

Thats a great little spread sheet comparing rate of return with nominal return (actual cash back). One caveat, other expenses are missing from that spreadsheet that could hugely affect rates of return and total profit. The first expense that comes to mind is fuel. That little junk unit with 900% return would turn into a loss if you included say $25 fuel costs, where as the expensive unit with only 100% return could assume the fuel costs with little change to overall rate of return and profit. Cheap units can be profitable but as an auction buyer you will probably want to buy multiple cheap units per auction day to spread the additional associated costs across all the units. Taking into consideration fuel only, as long as you can load everything while you are there then there is no additional cost in fuel to clean-out those cheapy "garbage" units.

Movieman, I know you know this, just wanted to point it out for the other players in the game. 

Movieman, I know you know this, just wanted to point it out for the other players in the game. 

Yes, gas is always an issue, especially if one has gone out of town any distance. I seldom do that anymore. Still waiting for the final crowd and newbie decline.

I DO buy small cheap units sometimes IF I have bought a big unit at the same location. You're already there and if you see some sellable items in a small unit (or even a junk unit) you're not impacting yourself negatively too much. The only problem with small (and especially JUNK) units in my area is that even they are going for $25 to $75. One gal who used to buy all the $5 and $1 units now spends up to $50 on them!  She has even gone up to $300 on semi-good looking 10 x 10s, but they typically are still going for around $500 in my area (witness the fact I recently spent $825 and $1900 for the last two lockers I got).