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Re: Tonight's Auctions

By: De_Composed in 6TH POPE | Recommend this post (0)
Sat, 28 Sep 24 9:00 AM | 23 view(s)
Boardmark this board | 6th Edition Pope Board 		Msg. 58773 of 59015
(This msg. is a reply to 58482 by De_Composed)
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We did three auctions Wednesday night... 1,029 lots. We tried for 39 and won four. That should give you a feel for the chances of getting a "win" at a good or better price. Bidding can be stressful, and it seems to be getting harder to succeed. Maybe the word is out that auctions are an outstanding way to get interesting things at exceptional prices.

My wife did the pickups on the wins today (Friday). One was an IBM Thinkpad (a laptop) and keyboard for $5. After winning it, I read the description and saw that it was described as "Not working, parts only." Argh. Why didn't I see that?

Next, a 12' x 10' screenhouse for $7. It's in its box... condition is unknown but it will probably be good. Most things are.

The final two lots were a batch of craft stuff like yarn for $3, and a "Kitchen Cabinet Lot Incl. Hand Mixers, Electric Can Opener, Incl. Rubber Lazy Susan" for $2.

We spent a total of $19.55 including the auction premium. Pretty good except for the broken laptop which I also see is missing its external keyboard. I could blame my wife but I don't think she knew it came with a keyboard. Mostly I blame the auction house for not bringing it out. It's okay, though. I'm forgiving them - because that laptop works! It looks to be in pristine condition - the laptop, case and accessories (a docking station) are really clean. I'm surprised to find that even the battery works. How could it? It's nearly 25 years old! Even the CDs are good - two from IBM with driver and tools, and a Windows 98 disk. BUT, the OS needs to be reinstalled and I don't remember how to do it! It's been a really long time. There's FORMAT, and FDISK and... what else?

Oh well. I'll have to do some research but it will probably eventually be a working Windows '98 laptop again... which will be kind of cool. I *know* I have boxes of Windows '98 software somewhere. And a few hundred 3.5" floppies. Maybe I can get some of my old programs to work again.















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The above is a reply to the following message:
Re: Tonight's Auctions
By: De_Composed in 6TH POPE
Fri, 20 Sep 24 3:50 AM 		Msg. 58482 of 59015

Two auctions tonight, the first of which was the most difficult we've ever been in - because we won 32 lots and lost several times that many. We were sometimes bidding when we didn't even know for sure what a lot included - just because its price was so low and time was running out. We frequently bid based on nothing but a cover photo... not looking at the additional pictures or reading the descriptions. That ISN'T a smart way to do an auction. As ribit has noted, it's a good way to wind up buying a lot of crap. But now that the adrenaline rush is over and we've had time to look into things, we actually didn't do too badly. That would have been hard since we spent just $152 (plus 18%.) That's an average $4.75 purchase price for lots with things like: • sets of four pipe wrenches, • sets of ten wire snips, • the first four seasons of Friends, • 25 action movie DVDs (a lot of Clint Eastwood's work), • lots with several Playstation 2, X-box, X-box 360 and X-box One games, etc.

Putting it in perspective, there are many auctions of this size where we win nothing. Zero. Zip. Zilch. So winning 32 is a big deal and definitely had us on our toes.

The second auction only had six wins for $131 (plus 15%), mostly because I paid too much for a deer hoist/winch ($80) like (but not identical to) the one shown to the right. Again, I hadn't done my homework and didn't know that similar hoists cost as little as $109 on Amazon. Oh well. I don't yet know if this a good quality hoist or a lame one, so it might sell for as much as $200 new. I'll know more when I see it.

And, so, this is an extremely circuitous way of getting to the point of this post: That I found the warning label on the hoist to be quite funny. For that warning to have been added, some nimrod had to have actually put someone up on a DEER hoist -- with predictable results and probably a lawsuit!

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