has anyone used the gov't liquidation auctions? what was your experience with it?
i see a couple things with starting bids at 50 but below it indicates orig purchase price at 1500. can i expect the prices to jump dramatically, or do they tend to stay low, etc?
I've participated in several of their auctions, though never successfully. My experience is limited to theodolites and total stations, but what I've observed is that even when the closing prices are attractive -- and that's not always the case -- unless you're located close enough to the host facility to do the pickup yourself, the cost of hiring the logistics support (checkout, packing and shipping) makes the overall cost uneconomic. Unfortunately for me, none of the gear in which I'm interested has been located at any of the nearby military facilities.
I purchased 49 Wild GDF 22 Tribrachs through a sealed bid government once. It was real easy. I out bid a friend by $0.37 cents each on them. I listed them on the OLD RPLS.com board, before POB, and sold them like hotcakes. Most everyone bought 6 at a time. They were new and had never been used. Some of them were still hermetically sealed.
I bought 3 lots of used HP calculators from the Hanford works. Mayby a hundred or so. Everything from earliest red dot 35's to 67's, plus a bunch of later 11's, 13's 15' 22's 23's 25's and a few of the third series. This was about the time everyone had switched to the new 41.
Note all the early series were still functional. Not even half the 2nd series worked.
Sold maybe half of them back then and got 4 times my money back. Sat on the rest for 10 years. Sold a few more for even better money.
Steve,
I also remember the auction where we teamed up to get the 'mint' condition pallet of Wild T-2's...and how you had the winning price but wrote the wrong lot number down.
DDSM;-)
My dad watches those auctions quite often. He has purchased several items and has been happy with them. Most recently, he bought 2 dump trucks. He sold one of them and kept the other for almost nothing.
BLOOD REFRIGERATOR
here it is. it looks like it can handle about four cases of ale at a time. label on the front says 'blood refrigerator'. all this and a graphical thermometer AKA cobex recorder, makes me thirsty.
maybe when hall o' ween comes, i will have some good ideas for using it as a prop...
