Lot Auctions

Yesterday I made a quick $20 at a car/lot auction buying a pallet of medical equipment. The auctions in my area sell discarded equipment from hospitals, schools, local government, etc.

So I bidded on a pallet of medical equipment just for grins and giggles. I got it for $1 plus a $10 buyer's fee. The scrap yard let me drop the whole 500 lbs of "miscellaneous metal" on their scale which paid out a little more than $30. I probably could have gotten more from dismantling everything and separating the copper and other precious metals but I really didn't have the time or space. Next time I go, I'll probably clear out some space in the garage to work.



But overall I am learning that what looks like "junk" to everyone else is really free money. I just have to bring a bigger truck so that I can take advantage of the bigger pallets.

Originally Posted by tedanderson

Yesterday I made a quick $20 at a car/lot auction buying a pallet of medical equipment. The auctions in my area sell discarded equipment from hospitals, schools, local government, etc.

So I bidded on a pallet of medical equipment just for grins and giggles. I got it for $1 plus a $10 buyer's fee. The scrap yard let me drop the whole 500 lbs of "miscellaneous metal" on their scale which paid out a little more than $30. I probably could have gotten more from dismantling everything and separating the copper and other precious metals but I really didn't have the time or space. Next time I go, I'll probably clear out some space in the garage to work.

But overall I am learning that what looks like "junk" to everyone else is really free money. I just have to bring a bigger truck so that I can take advantage of the bigger pallets.

Wonder what a car lot was doing with a bunch of medical equipment. I once sold a bunch of that kind of stuff on ebay

Well what I meant is that it was a car auction that also had "lot" auctions..aka miscellaneous items.

I am so sad I get that space can be a pain at times but that even with out seeing it or knowing what it was could easily guess would have been $300 on a low side

Yeah.. anything that remotely resembled an Xray machine would have been something different. But this was primarily lab equipment. It consisted of scales, some kind of heater/crock pot looking thing.. and then there was this thing called a centrifuge that was about the size of a shoe-shine box and had what looked like a bucket strainer recessed inside of it with some refrigerator coils surrounding it.

Maybe there was much more money hidden in those boxes but I had 2 issues-

1. nowhere to dismantle it
2. I was a little paranoid about pathogens and any other diseased particles that might have been lurking inside of this stuff.

I drove to the yard with BOTH windows down to avoid breathing any harmful bacteria.