Hotel auction...what a joke!

so, I previously posted that I was considering attending an auction, to which, I did. Good way to spend a day.

So, theres about 40 people at this auction...about 3-4 are buissines owners, and about 3 scrappers. The most were pretty much lookie-loos. I'm lumped in this catagory, as I didn't really do much but laugh.



Throughout the day I get the story on the sale and the future of the building. The building was foreclosed on, and the bank finally had a serious buyer who wants the building cleaned out so he can evaluate the structure and possibly combine 3 units together to make condos. O...K....

Well, bank contacts a contractor to clean the building. Contractor evaluates the value of individual items, prices them, hires auction company to sell them. As I previously mentioned, next to nothing is reuseable (however people were buying bedding/dishes/glasses/etc for use in their buissinesses...gross...) and the prices on the kitchen items were insane. Auction begins. Their selling bedding, towels, coffe pots, irons....theres one scrapper there who has his hands on EVERYTHING, grading it, and buying it for just under scrap value, so if anybody bid against him they would be paying more than scrap value. He's got his plan worked out. More power to him.

I left for about 2 hours and missed the kitchen items. Came back for the end of the auction. In the end, I wound up buying a 6ft tall heavy duty (rusty) steel shelf for my garage for $9, a big wooden lockable box on casters for $11, 4 small garbage cans (flame retardent) for .25 a piece, and a computer monitor for .25. Now, I only brought my girlfriend Ford Focus, so the big items needed to wait until the next day. Call her dad up, he says he'll pick the goods up for me.

Next day we go back. All the kitchen appliances/stoves/cold tables/etc are still there. Hmm. I get to talking with one of the workers, come to find out asking price was around $1000-$1500 a piece ("those are expensive units brand new" "yea well all those units are corroded, with 4 year old grease and yes, chunks of food still in them"). Highest bid was anywhere from $50-$200 a piece. Well, the contractor also gets TOP DOLLAR for scrap. They wound up "buying back" any large items that sold below scrap value (WAAAAY below) because they didn't make anywhere NEAR as much as they were supposed to. After the sale/auction/final cleanup is complete, if the money earned is not enough to pay off the bank, the contractor agreed to pay the rest of the money, and in the end, making NO priofit, plus going backwards because he has to pay his workers for all the work they have done the last 2 months. Everytime something was sold, the contractor shook his head, and got more and more visably p**sed as the day went on.

To me, this was a good and bad first experience. Good, because of a small crowed. Bad, because the auctioneers SUCKED, and there really were only like 2 people battling over the same items. The auction company was from across the state, so all their regulars lived across the state. I told the contractor he picked the wrong company, that there was an auction company about 10 miles away who would have done much better advertising, and probably got him 2-3 times as much from the sale. He told me to F*** off. I laughed.

Sounds like this guy needs to re-eval his whole thinking logic. First - as you said he used the wrong company. Always go local for auction stuff unless it's rare items like coins, art, etc. Then you ship it to the auction location...not other way around. Second - maybe I miss understand this. The bank contacted Contractor to clean out the building for the Buyer. So why would the Contractor end up paying the bank? He should of done a fixed bid for the work and then either that makes or breaks him if he underbid. So sounds like to me he should of re-eval the work to be done vs his bid.

Gotta love auctions. Keep it up though I learned through the years of doing and going to huge industrial auctions of closed down plants that they are always hit or miss. Yes sometimes there is a planted person in the crowd by the auction company to bid stuff up but you can usually tell this person right away and I usually exit stage right. The best auctions seem to be the ones where you end up bidding against no one and you get the item for next to nothing and make 10 times that much when you scrap it. Better luck next time and in every industry in america theres always one a-hole. Just stay it and I do have a suggestion though I have almost every single auction website there is known to man saved under a section in my favorites on my web browser and when I used to do auctions I would check them all weekly and watch and bid on a few auctions a week. Sometimes you lose sometimes you hit the jackpot. I would travel all over the country following auctions and trust me if you travel that far you want to make sure you know exactly what you are bidding on the weight of the machinery the grade of the machinery how much you can get for pieces and parts off the machine that aren't scrap such as pumps, motors, wiring, electrical items, etc. The auction game is a wild ride and has its ups and downs just don't get burnt and lose all your chips making mistakes and you will turn out a winner 90 percent of the time. There's also some auction websites that let you search every single auction in your state and they usually have the catalog for auction posted. Anyhow I hope this helps a little and the next auction you go to makes you a chunk of change you can come on here and brag about. Good Luck.

M88, thats exactly what everyone there said. The auctioneer and contractor were both saying "these items are (enter price here) brand new." Well, sure when the items were new 10 years ago, and havnt been locked up in a moldy builing for 3 years...the guy really didnt do his homework on the building before taking the job. Hell a simple google search told me that their last year in buissiness they had cleanliness issues...

Tico, from piecing together what the workers told me, and other bidders passed on, was that the building was foreclosed on a couple years ago. The bank, thinking it was an easy sell being a couple miles from Lambeau Field, figured they could sell the place quick. Wrong. So, buyer comes along and is interested in buying the building to convert into condos (by combining 3 rooms together), however buyer wants the structure, not the crap inside. Well, due to water damage, and the fact the inside was horribly outdated to begin with, the building isnt worth near as much as the bank needs to at least break even. BRAINSTORM! Hire contractor to sell as much as possible, hell, contractor did a good job gutting the old mall downtown, this should be a breeze. So, bank breaks even, and any left over goes to contractor, and bank then sells structure to new buyer, thus making the bank profit. Brilliant! Well, building vacant for 3 years means no maintenance...you get the idea.

George, after thinking about it, im thinking the local auctioneers turned it down...the company who did the auction doesnt look like they have had much buissiness lately and was hurting for some work...