Method #5: Local Area Auctions

Method number five is local auctions. In my area, in our Sunday paper, we have lists of local auctions in the area where you can go to. A company’s going out of business. You can quite often find a good deal. There are pros and cons about it. If you like doing that kind of thing, that’s wonderful. The thing is you never know. It’s kind of like a crapshoot. You can score big or come away with nothing.

For example, one time my brother and I were doing this together. We went to a computer auction and there was a certain card called a Brooktrout Fax Card. My brother knew about it. He said, “Mike, those things are valuable. They sell for like $100, $150.” Actually $200 new, I think it was. They're hard to find.

We ended up buying 30 of them for $8 each. We sold them for $165 each on average, so my brother and I made $4,000 profit from a morning’s worth of work. And we got to hang out together and have some fun.

But then we went to another auction and we almost came away with nothing. So don’t expect to hit a home run each time.

I think about the one that we made $4,000 for the morning. Woo Hoo!
So, check your Sunday paper. The really cool thing that you want to do is when you walk in the auction, they always have a sheet that lists all the items. Sometimes you can go online ahead of time and get that. Then you can figure out a target, exactly the items you want to go for when you get there.

What helps is if you have somebody at home that you can call on your cell phone that can do some eBay research for you. My brother and I would go in there. We knew what items we were interested in. We put a little check box next to them. Look them over; make sure they were okay.

Then we’d go out to the car; he'd call his wife; I’d call my wife. In five or ten minutes, we’d figure out, “Okay, we can pay it. This is worth this. This is worth that.” Then at the auction, you know exactly what you're willing to spend for something.
Some people can even do that on their own phones nowadays, which is really cool. Keep that in mind.