Update on the firefighting valves.
Bought for $27.07 total with tax. Paid $1.42 altogether for a money order & stamp to mail it with. Spent ~ an hour and a half playing with them, and breaking them down. Sold for $65.75 at the yard.
Profit $37.26, some good fun, and a bit of an education.
What I did right: I bid on something that was worth far more than I bid on it. I knew that because I swung by the firehouse & inspected the items firsthand... I hefted it. I touched it. I knew what I was buying and I knew its condition. I bid an amount that I could still make good money with, and I put in a reserve bid that was a penny higher that the next incremental bid to at least throw an obstacle in front of a bid sniper. One guy tried to bid that next increment one minute before the auction closed, but my "maxbid" was still a penny higher than his, so I won with that.
What I did wrong: it was kind of a specialty item. The guy running the scale called the most experienced scale operator over, who in turn called one of the yard's main buyers over. Had I not had the receipt from the auction house they wouldn't have bought the valves at all. Something to keep in mind in the future.
It wasn't a huge payday... I wanted to start small with this auction bidding thing... but all in all, I got all three pieces of my PIE (Profit, Information, Entertainment) . It was a good buy.
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