First Auction Buy

Howdy y'all, just wanted to share my first auction endeavor. Since the lots have ended, I will share pics and prices as well as payouts. Anyway I ended up winning two lots, one is a bunch of shelving and misc metal, as well as a flat screen TV and a pallet. The second lot is 4 decent looking filing cabinets. Total cost for everything out the door was $18.00.

Lot 1:



Total: $12.00

Lot 2:



Total: $6.00



The pickup location is 2 miles away from me and the scrap yard is 2 miles from there. I am currently getting $.065/LB for shred steel right now so I know that I can at least sell the steel and make a profit there. I am also going to try and sell the filing cabinets for $20-$30 a piece. I think I will walk away with a pretty good profit once everything is sold. Hoping my next buy includes some better stuff!

Originally Posted by DakotaRog

Nice score!! I hope you do well selling those filing cabinets for more than scrap value. Your yard must have a nearby end-user of their scrap, is there a mini-mill close by? I haven't gone to the steel yard since late Oct/early Nov but then I got 3.75 cents a pound for "tin & wire", your "shred" equivalent up here.

Yeah they ship their steel about 2 hours away to a shredder. I get great steel prices because of it and I'm very thankful! The yard I use is also really lenient (at least with me) about trash and fluff on metal. Earlier this week I brought them over 1600lbs of steel foam-core doors from a hotel, probably only around 40-50% metal and they didn't care. Very good yard to work with once I built a relationship with the staff.

Alright so this morning I picked up everything and all of it ended up going to the scrap yard. The filing cabinets were too dented and beat up to resell. I also got a 40" Sharp Aquos TV that works other than a small black line. I am going to keep it for now, I might use it as a computer monitor. Here's the results:

Shelving Unit Lot: (Straight to Scrapyard)
Purchase - $12
Scrapped - 520lbs @ $6.50CW = $33.80
Profit = $21.8


Filing Cabinet Lot:
Paid - $6
Scrapped - 400LBS @ $6.50CW = $26.00
Profit: $20



It only took me about an hour and a half to finish scrapping everything so I think I did okay overall. I will be on the lookout for other cheap scrap lots if I can find them.

renebates dotcom occasionally has auction lots down your way. It's $100 to open a bidding account there, but that does serve to keep the riffraff away.