I love auctions and garage sales and so on.
What’s you favorite item you picked up at one of these sales? Was it a good deal?
I’d say mine would be a lawn trimmer. $7.50 Used it for 3 yrs, then it stopped working. I gave it to my kids to play with. The did…and left it out behind the shed for the whole winter.
My other trimmer packed it in, so I plugged the old on in and…it worked.
My kids wanted it back.
One thing about acutions is that you’re always guaranteed to pay more than anyone else is willing to pay! 
I picked up a 750w fresnel movie light at a yard sale for $2. And it works! The sticker is worn off, but I think it’s a Mole-Richardson. With a bag of scrims and a set of barndoors, I’ll be set! One of these days I’ll do some cosmetic work on it. Not too important though, because I already have a light kit.
Part of the fun is when you find an auction where things are going darn cheap. I still like showing people things I bought and saying “Look! I got this for (some pretty low price)!”
We got our dining room suite (antique 1930s vintage table, chairs, and buffet) for $150.00. Our brass double bed we picked up $40.00. I got my favorite (but ugly) recliner for $1.00.
My wife bought a Jacoulet wood block print (misrepresented as a “watercolor on silk”, but we knew what it was) for about $20.00. List price is ~$1000.00. She also bought a sterling silver Art Nouveau locket for $5.00. We’re really not sure what it’s worth (a darn sight more that $5.00), but we did trace its origins to the Vienna Workshop.
I’ve seen other people walk away with major scores, too. Y’know, things that I didn’t need, but were sold cheap. Electric kiln: $40.00. Art Deco waterfall bedroom suite: $125.00. Agfa 35mm camera: $5.00. Someone found a gold pocketwatch in a $1.00 box lot.
Auctions? haha, you can laugh at me.
Anyway, the idiots who run them locally won’t let me know what the prices are so I have to read auctioneer lips [ack]. Let me tell you, some numbers look the same on one’s lips so let me tell you about a marvelous deal I got.
I bought a nice silver plated coffee pot for $5.00. Later when I went to pick it up, they said I bid $50.00 for it.
See, 5, 15, 50 all look the same on ones lips. Are you still laughing? PS: Never did that again.
I got a trenchcoat from ebay for $8.50. I was bidding against someone else, but evidently it got to be too expensive for him. 
Well, this wasn’t me but…
I answer phones for a computer company. Anyway, some guy calls me up… and I get the computer information. The guy wants to know whats in the system… Seems he went to a blind storage auction, (they list non-specefic items… and you bid. Highest bid gets the stuff). So he bid $100 on “computer parts” figuring he might get some parts he can pirate.
Turns out he got a PIII 700, buttloads of ram, nice vid card… the works. Lucky bastard
Screeme
I got an old fashoned switchboard. Seven foot high, like a highboy secretary with a slate desktop, with about a dozen phone lines. Most of the plug wires and jacks were gone and it looked like hell, but I stripped it and varnished it and and polished the brass, and now it’s the coolest piece of furniture in the house.
wow…sounds like some really cool stuff out there.
I just wish there were more auctions in my area…I’ve got to drive over an hour to go to my favorite one.(in Kelowna)
A couple of my best deals came from the same auction. I bought a Deco 5-drawer dresser and a very old Franklin electric sewing machine in a wooden cabinet that works fine for $1 each. That was a great auction. I only wish I had a bidding partner that day because they used 2-3 auctioneers throughout the sale so I missed out on many other great deals.
Well, at a garage sale we found some super-cool remote controlled replica Caterpillar road machinery. Tonka-truck sized. And they work, they’re just dusty. They’ve got lights, working buckets and blades, moving treads, etc. For $2 each!! We pretended to be buying them for my son but I play with them a lot.
I’ve bought some rather dirty baby gear things at garage sales, cleaned them up for use, and then resold them when we were done with them, at a profit.
I am stunned at how many garage sale sellers don’t bother to clean the crap they are putting up for sale. They could get DOUBLE for it if they’d remove the scrunge. I just get out the trusty black-n-decker scumbuster and go to town…
The construction company I was working for sold my company truck at auction in April. A 1995 Toyota 4Runner with 200,000+ miles (but you’ll never really know, since the speedometer and odometer broke at 197,759). About three years ago (before I got it) it was broadsided and rebuilt. There was a very slight twisting in the frame that was never noticed until all the insurance stuff was done, so that the truck starts shaking at about 4mph, and doesn’t stop until you shut off the engine. If you put it into 4 wheel drive, the front wheels spun at one speed, and the back wheels spun at another - it would pull you out of the mud (well, it would pull a lot of the mud with you), but 4-wheel was uselss on streets, snow, ice, etc. I can’t imagine anyone paying more than $1,500 for it.
Somebody bought this thing for $5,800.
I’d love to find some RC Cats. Our shop manager has a dozer, but nobody else is allowed to play with it. He’s seen the way people treat the real stuff, and he doesn’t want his toy subjected to that kind of abuse.
And they’ll probably make it look good and fix it up just enough to sell it to the next guy for twice that…
I’ve been to a few of the federal multi-agency auctions that included U.S. Customs, FBI, DEA, USPS, US Marshalls, and some others I can’t remember. The first time I went, I didn’t really have that much money so I wasn’t there as much to bid as I was to look. There weren’t many people there, and there were deals aplenty.
Next time I went, (I think six months later) I was loaded with cash ready to buy anything that interested me or that I could sell for a profit. The place was PACKED and people were bidding ridiculously high. Bidding war after bidding war was driving the prices up on every item. Finally, when it was obvious that there were no deals to be had, the true experienced bargain hunters, (myself included) exited en masse. The next Federal auction I went to was just as bad, if not worse.
The next type of auction I want to check out is the storage warehouse blind auctions. I’ve heard of a few VERY good finds in those.
I picked up an almost new Fletchmatic fourth finger rope release (anyone into archery knows what this is) for $14.00. This item retails for $75.00, the only thing that will ever wear out is the rope and it can be replaced for less than ten cents.
I’m getting 45 carats of iolite from Thailand delivered tomorrow. $16! And that’s with shipping.
I just got out of bed and my synapses aren’t all firing in sequence yet. I thought that said Feltchmatic.