What happened to auction prices? Wow!

My mom is a beneficiary in an estate in Vermont. They had the auction last month. A watch that had been appraised at $500 went for $17,000. My mother is very happy. lol

Wow!! I bet she is tickled pink. LOL..or green haha

In my experience, the junk goes cheap and the good stuff goes high, sometimes above retail.
In the rare event there is a specific item that I want and not in demand, I can get a deal. But there is almost always someone that wants what I want.
I bought a manure spreader with steel wheels for $25, my opening bid. No one else there wanted it.
I bid on a 3000 pound 8 foot 3 point rototiller. No one wanted it, except scrap dealers and one guy. I could have gotten it for $300, but bid it up to $1000 and let him have it.
Every Thursday 2000 to 3000 items sell at www.1800lastbid.com. You can review past auction prices, too. I am amazed at what people will pay for a car they know very little about. Same for equipment.

Dont you just hate it when you could have had it for a song, then that one person starts bidding too. Why couldn't they have been busy talking or something? LOL

When one of my grandfather's shop was auctioned off in the 1970s, my father was similarly stunned at the high prices his old tools and junk brought. I suspect that Vermont and New England in general have much higher pricing than the rural south.

Much of it depends on the time and place. I sold a bunch of my stuff at an auction early this year. The Auctioneer, for some reason, decided to have the auction on a Friday instead of a Saturday when these types of auctions usually take place.

Add to that it turned out to be a bad weather day (though the auction was inside) I ended getting about 30% of what the stuff was normally worth. I looked over the individual prices and bidder numbers when he sent my check. One person, no doubt an antique dealer bought almost all of my 300 or so items. About $13,000 worth of stuff. with the depressed market we hoped for 10,000. As it was some dealer who had no one to really bid against, got a great deal, and I ended up pocketing about $3000 after the auctioneers commission.

We were hoping we would get enough to buy a decent used tractor... If anyone had been at that aution they would have found fantastic prices..... trouble was, there were only a few, and our investment bit the dust.

Having said that, I was at a small house estate sale the other day, and a small refrigerator, proabaly 3 or more years old and dirty sold for more than one could buy it new. I happened to be looking for one for our work break room, so I had seen the same (appartment size) fridge at the applaince store just a few days before.

You pays your money and you takes your chances :~

__________________
Moving to that big black hole in the night satellite photo. (also the hole in cell phone coverage )

The stuff was pretty amazing. The house and contents were like a well preserved museum of things from the 20's-50's. A museum actually bought a lot of it. The watch that went for so much was really ugly though. Baffling how it went for so much. lol

Welcome to the wonderful world of capitalism at its finest. Auctions have long been the best appraisal system ever used. The law of supply and demand has never been so easily accessed than at a well advertised and promoted public auction.

__________________
"Nothing so needs reforming as other peoples habits." Mark Twain

You win some and you lose some.

I've been a semi regular at one of the local auctions for the past two years. You learn who is who and what they buy. Some I don't bother bidding against, the sky is their limit. Others, like the antique shops and crafty people have thin profit margins. They know what they can pay and when to stop.

I will pay near retail prices for some things because it will be far better quality than if I bought it new. Sometimes I'll take a gamble and buy a box of stuff for one item in it and junk the rest. I've also purchased stuff from others in the parking lot when the one item I wanted was what they were going to junk. You buy what you know and let someone else buy the rest. It can be a cheap $20 entertainment for a day.

Auction prices are high, because people have money to spend.