Buying at Auctions

[Ulu]

This thread is for things you've bought or lost at auction & about going to auctions and the things you bid for there. Yard sales are OK, but they don't really count unless you have bid on the item.

Since I retired I've gone to a number of estate auctions, and I've scored a number of fine old tools for peanuts. I posted the pic of my conduit benders, won four for $15. It would cost $300+ to replace these new.


At the same auction I bought some lovely Victor gas regulators and 4 industrial gage torch tips for $25, & for just $75, our Victor dealer bead-blasted & rebuilt both regulators (with new gages too!) Victor torches were finest American made for about a century.

I have bought many drill bits, some extractors, grinders, routers and I scored a smaller gage Victor torch kit, complete with bottles and a (rusty) heavy duty torch cart, for $80. There was $50 worth of gas & oxy in the bottles! You could not buy a cart this good at Fresno Oxy. Heavy duty and hand made probably before 1950.

I bid online as well, which is how I got this car for $9000



(it's not really worth too much more, so not my greatest score, but I've always loved the style. Watch me spend some money on this thing once the panic lifts....)

Sadly, all Estate Auctions have all been closed down here since the virus. I've been sitting on some cash & holding off to buy certain expensive tools, but it seems the lockdown will continue here.

 

[duanes]

Being a one trick pony, the only auctions I attend (or have attended in the past) have been fish auctions.
I got a bag of 10 juvie dovii at a LFC auction for $2 when no others were wacko enough to bid.

At another Milwauke Aquarium club auction.
I picked up 3 female Paratilapia small spot, and 1 male for $50.

And at an American Cichlid Association convention auction, got a bag of 7 grammodes for $40.
You don't need to be a member to make use of most of these auctions.

And these are only a few I can remember, I have been attending fish auctions of The Milwaukee Aquarium Society, The Greater Chicago Cichlid Assn, and the American Cichlid Assn since the mid 80s.
I would imagine a good percentage of the fish I have keopt over the years have been from these, and as you can see, from above, the prices have been great. One just has to have the available tank space, and be willing to go out of the box when something turns up (and usually to know the scientific names, as that is how most fish are presented)

 

[pacu mom]

I've attended equipment auctions with my husband up and down the west coast and went to Salt Lake City to an auction. We've run into Fred Hurt, "Dakota Fred" from Gold Rush, twice at I-5 auctions. The Gold Rush characters sometimes buy heavy equipment at Richie Brother Auctions. There have been several shows where they were bidding at an auction in Olympia WA. We made a mad dash this week to Portland, OR to pick up stuff my husband bid on line for. The pandemic has changed the auctions a little, and they seem to be doing more on line bidding and limiting the number of on site bidders.

This is the only thing I bought at an auction. It was fun, and I can see how it can become addicting.




Using it to store my Cascadia earthquake survival gear and supplies.

My husband buys forklifts, trailers, other lifts, storage containers and stuff like that. This lift came in handy for limbing redwood trees before he felled them. The trees were a hazard for our house and the house next door.

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With their shallow root system and close proximity to two houses, they were hazard trees.


A couple of weeks ago, I bid on a delimber for a logger who was working in the hills and couldn't bid. His maximum bid was $15,000. I was outbid before the on site bidding started. The delimber went for over $30,000. In recent years, equipment dealers have taken over the auctions. It is getting very difficult to get a great deal when the dealers show up with hundreds of thousands of dollars and have the funds to outbid every one.

 

[bell3306]

I love going to auctions. I bought my house at one.

 

[Ulu]

I got this longboard at an auction, back in 2011, and it's a total rock from the land of Gnar.

It's for "switch" riding, being the same forwards or backwards.