Hi from South Carolina

Can't do much with an auction in a week; you would be hard pressed to scrap it all out in a week without some help, depending on how clean your client wants it to be left after you are done. You need to have a discussion with your client on how much time she can allow you to have.

You would definitely do better with an auction first, before scrapping what is left after auctioning what you can.

I'd suggest you call a local auctioneer who could come out and give you an estimate of what you might realize if you auctioned on site. (And how much the auctioneer would cost to do it!)

If there isn't enough "decent stuff" to auction then you could also consider taking just the stuff that would bring more than scrap to a consignment auction house somewhere. I think I saw an air compressor, drill press, grinder, benches, and there might be a tire machine and some hand tools. Are there any "New old stock" automotive parts that could be quite old? They might generate some interest. Taking the "good stuff" out to an off-site auction house would allow you to get to the scrapping quickly. Your favorite scrapyard would probably be happy to drop off a bin for scrap metal, saving you the transportation hassle.

If there is other scrap material of any quantity that you could separate out, you should consider doing it because scrapping it all out as "steel scrap" guarantees you will get the lowest possible price at the scrapyard....you know about copper wire, but brass, aluminum, stainless steel, old batteries, etc are worth sorting out.

I recently scrapped out an old planermill here in BC where the management figured we would be lucky to break even--auctioneers told us to just scrap it out 'cause there wasn't anything worth selling. I set up a "sealed bid" auction were you put in your bid on an item before the closing date and we ended up with over $400 grand. The thing we had here was time--it took about 10 weeks by the time we labelled everything, took zillions of photographs, put ads in kijiji and equipment trading magazines and farmers mags, etc, etc

Sounds like you have a fun task ahead of you! Good luck!!

Jon.