So my boss has bought this old autoparts store and is attempting to liquidate much of the inventory without much luck. The basement of this place is practically stuffed with alternators/generators in various stages of being rebuilt, along with everything one could possibly need to rebuild them. We’ve tried calling the alternator rebuilders listed in the phone book to see if they’d be willing to buy the stuff, but they can’t even be bothered to come out and look at it. I’ve done google searches to try and find some place that might take them, but haven’t had much luck.
The only other possibility I can think of is hauling the stuff to a metal recycler, but I don’t think the boss is real keen on that idea, and that won’t help with the non-metallic components. It seems like a waste just to scrap all of them, and then throw the rest of the stuff in the garbage. Anybody got any ideas?
The boss hasn’t figured out eBay yet, and I haven’t the time to show him. Plus the stuff is in no way organized. Alternators are piled into 55 gallon drums or randomly stuffed onto shelves, next to brushes, rivets, bearings, pulleys, etc.
55 gallon drums? Egads, man! I was thinking you had 20 or 30. (I guess I misunderstood your email.) Still, you might list them all in a single lot and start the bidding at a penny. Someone may pay for the freight with the idea of selling them themselves. Or sell them by the drum. Might be better to show the boss how eBay works, than to scrap usable alternators.
I’m an old car buff. I have a 1950 Chevy pickup truck.
Things like this are of much value to certain people. The trick is finding the right person. There are people who buy up inventories like this, catalog them, and offer them to collectors. I would take the time to figure out at least what some of them are and post in a few classic car forums and see if anyone wants to buy or simply haul away the inventory. Another option would be the Hemmings Motor News classifieds or Craigslist. Please do not scrap this stuff, old car parts of good quality are hard to find, even in a state of disassembly.
Well, the boss doesn’t want to scrap the stuff, but he’s loathe to spend any money unless he can be certain that someone will buy it. And we can identify some of the stuff, to a degree. We can tell that some of its from the 1940s and some of its fairly recent, but tracking down the exact model is a bit problemmatic, and given that almost all the inventory is nearly in the same state of disarray it seems pointless to focus so much attention on something we’re going to sell by lot, rather than spending that time on things like gaskets, where we can easily target Model-T owners and the like. Plus, the stuff that is organized is so volumous that its going to take ages to inventory it, and figure out what it is.
You’re too far away for Hershey, PA-they have antique auto shows with huge flea market areas.
How about you offering to sell the stuff on eBay yourself in exchange for a % of the take? That could amount to some nice beer money. Failing that, I’d start searching the internet for bulk rebuilders who wouldn’t mind having even disassembled stuff on hand to use for repair of damaged cores.
If it’s all in one big disorganized mass, it’s not going to have much value to anyone other than as scrap. He doesn’t know what he’s got at all. At a minimum, he’s going to have to sort through it all and make a detailed inventory. No one’s going to pay much for a barrel of stuff merely on the premise that “I’m sure there’s one for a 1947 Chevy Pickup in there somewhere!”
You could post over at my old page (now under new management). The CJ2A Page. Now, these guys drive '45-'49 Willys, but I’m sure some of them have other old vehicles. The CJ2A Locator Page shows nine owners in Tennessee, and several others in surrounding states. There may be someone there who could take the alternators off your hands. Maybe even pay for them. Knowing these guys, I doubt they’ll scrap them.
The alternators are pretty much in a disorganized heap, but the components are fairly well organized, though many of them are in unlabelled containers. I know very little about electrical things, so I can only guess what some of the stuff is. As for the generators, well, there’s a pretty broad selection easily visible. Hell, I’ve found about five of the same type that were used on the Tucker (Motorola built, IIRC), and at a casual glance I’ve seen 60s-era Chrysler units, and a few modern GM ones. Someone who’s familiar with alternators/generators could no doubt ID a lot more without rooting around. Plus, if you’re getting (for example) $10K worth of inventory for $1K (for example), then I don’t think you’d really care if it was all sorted out before hand. Certainly the guys we sold a bunch of clutches and pressure plates to, didn’t care that their stuff was all jumbled up and mislabeled.
