I believe they sell at public auction due to the fact that gov't property belongs to the public. In many you'll see in the fine print all persons working in the pick-up must be US citizens (and I suppose that, in some cases could also be attributed to security) I purchased countless lots in the process, and not sure if I ever had to prove citizenship (unless it was during my initial application to bid, that's been too long ago), and just showed up with my purchase receipt. There were times I did go through a fine comb getting through the gates, such as ay Homeland Security, etc.



On another note, during the early to mid 80s I became quite a tinkerer, and was constantly looking for metal, and my search took me as far as the DOD surplus auctions. There was no internet then, you signed up to receive their surplus sales notices for whichever regions you chose. They would send a list 3 or 4 times a year. The lots were bid by mail, you send a closed bid by mail, and wait for the results. The lots were far bigger than anything I needed for my projects so I never bid on any, but man oh man, if I had only known then! ; )

One more tune here, the internet auctions they do now are mostly ended at the time stated, but only after all bidding activity has ceased (if it's a 10 minute inactivity period, or whatever is stated in the auction rules, any bid during the final ten minutes extends the closing time by ten more minutes from that time, in that case, there must be ten minutes of dead silence before it closes). If you are not present at closing time, you missed the actual auction. In the case of a ten minute rule, I'd place my bid eleven minutes before auctions end, and wait for a response, if none came, the auction closed at the set time. If my bid was answered with a higher bid, then the actual auction was on