Live Public Auctions

For some reason, I think of laundry when I think of live auctions. It must be my Mom's fault somehow. She loved the Saturday auctions, and once bought a gas dryer for $5. She used that dryer for the next 20 or 25 years. What a bargain! And bargains like that are still out there, if you happen to be sitting in the right place at the right time. (In good conscious I have to take this moment to tell anyone considering bidding that auction houses rely on this belief to keep their doors open.)

Public Auctions are great places to get a few bucks out of something you might otherwise have to pay to store or dispose of.  And fun places to buy something really cool that you weren't planning on buying, and

How to Sell Your Stuff

Before we ever went to our first auction we began exploring the whole re-sale issue.  Because I had already figured out that selling our stuff would be at least twice as hard as finding and buying it. (Yep, figured that out all by myself!)  We are by nature cautious, planning-ahead kind of people.  Either that or super lazy, pessimistic, don't want to get out there and try and fail kind of people. Whichever.  Either way, we knew we had to learn the ropes of selling before we started buying.  And since we are the proud descendants of pack rats, this was not a problem.

1.  Yard Sales.  Being both curious and lazy, when I want to find the best way to do something, I usually ask as many people as possible how they do it.  Especially the people who seem to be doing it right. (Translate that to mean they are actually making money at it.)  So during our first few storage

Storage Auction Schedules

I find the whole scheduling thing a challenge, but my first two resources are the local newspapers and the Internet.  In most cases, those two can both be found in the same place. So I go online to find the legal notices in the local papers. Free computers are available for scheduled use in most libraries, which have the advantages of being both quiet and air-conditioned.  But I like to spend hot afternoons in front of my computer, and I usually do my research from my Lay-Z-Boy in the den. 

The big newspapers will usually let you read the postings on-line, and I like to copy and paste them into one document.  I usually start with the LVRJ (gosh, what a great affiliate link they would be!) because they've got such a user friendly web-site.  Then I check the legal news publications.  These publications experience a different financial environment and often make you buy a copy or a subscription.  (I really hate the ones that

Going to an Auction: What You'll Need

How do you get started?  We thought that was a no-brainer.  Go to a few auctions.  Don't plan to buy, but carry money.  Okay, we did that.  Tips for getting started begin with this piece of advice:  Avoid this activity in the dead of summer.  But if you're like us, and no longer in control of the way your universe is currently spinning, you may find that the hottest part of the day is a good time to research up-coming auctions. 

Our first trip out to bid on storage auctions we learned a few things.  Such as, if you insist on going out buying in the summer, then you'll want to take along an ice chest full of drinks.  Mostly water.  Lots of ice.  And remember basic things, like ice melts.  If you freeze a couple of those bottles of water the night before, you're far more likely to still have an ice-cold drink at the end of the day.  (That's something everyone who lives or plays on

Finding Local Auctions and Sales

Once we decided to start going to auctions, and realized that first we had to find out where and when, I settled into the business of putting together lists of sales.  I don't know how other people do it, maybe they start by tagging along with a friend, but what we got was a tip that U-haul runs all of theirs on the same day every month.  (It turned out to be the wrong day, but at least it gave me a place to start looking.)  So I immediately jumped on the Internet and started searching for random notices, and that's how I discovered that we had been told the wrong days. 

We keep a storage unit at Public Storage a block from our house, so next I started looking for facilities that I was already familiar with.  Don't ask me why.  But when that didn't pan out I started making phone calls.  The female voice on the phone at the first Public Storage I called told me that they advertise all their auctions in the Nevada Legal News.  So I make a regular practice of going to that site and paying my