would you buy from government scrap auctions?

iv been looking at this auction and it is a gold mine! im weary of it though. has anyone baught from this kind of auctions:confused:

im watching an auction of 37,000lbs of insulated wire and its at 150$ right now and the auction closes tomorrow

They never go cheap... but if you can get it for your price go for it.

i saw some auctions close and they ended at a lil over 3 grand. that still sounds like a steal to me.

I have won a couple local gov auctions and as long as you can make $$ why wouldnt you. but i have seen many go from $150 to $10000 in the last hour or so of bidding. good luck and stick to your max bid.

Kind of new to scrap business. So, maybe dumb question, but just curious. Why doesn't gov. just sell scrap directly to a scrap yard? Are they trying to get a higher price? Don't want to mess with breaking it down and trying to get a higher price than they could if they scrapped as is? Just don't care to mess with it period? As for the "don't want to mess with breaking it down", I would not understand this with some of the spent ammo casings they are selling on one site I went to out of curiosity. You just sell those for brass price without breaking anything down, right?

I've purchased stuff from govdeals.com. I've also seen other government listings for brass, copper, alum, etc. in large lots. However, most of these lots require special permits and/or certified destruction.

Dreamingofafrica - what the gov is doing is really selling to scrap yards via auction. That way they don't pay to haul it off, etc. Plus, due to the weight your talking about the scrap yards fight each other to place the winning bid.

I still check then but every thing has gone crazy there.

I think the gov. is required to sell off there surplus by auctions. Make sure to read all the terms because it is the same as a contract. Make sure you know what you'r getting into.

i have seen more than a few scrap auctions close for pennies on the dollar, and i couldnt bid because i wasnt sure about the mutilation part of it. on the other hand though, there are a lot of other metal things that sell for cheap on a lot of them and they dont require mutilation.

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

I buy regularly and very rarely do i loose a bid if i want it, 98% of it must be mutulated you can mutulate it yourself then call the approved government agent and he will sign off that it has been met to standards before you can sell it, if you are caught selling it before you complete the mutulation process you will be fined and banned from any/all government auctions and you will face various federal charges. Just mutulate it to where it cannot be reused with out melting it down and call the official if you play by their contract you will become wealthy, i have based my company off this type of recycling.

Ron Miller, Owner/Operator
Miller Recycling

I mostly bought computer related lots, and never once was mutilation even mentioned

Fyi dell docing stations arent worth the $

All shell casings and misc vehicles are scraped and dismantled in the united states and cannot leave the country . Which is why u rarely see true humvees on the road.

So you don't have to mutilate it on there premises? I saw some radiators that had to be mutilated, would that be just bashing with a sledge or would you have to cut them all in half?

Originally Posted by james2144

So you don't have to mutilate it on there premises? I saw some radiators that had to be mutilated, would that be just bashing with a sledge or would you have to cut them all in half?

why in hek would a radiator need to be mutilated ? I could see disabling tanks, or battleships, but radiators?