You have all seen them before, ads featuring “GOVERNMENT AUCTION, HUGE SAVINGS ON CARS, JEWELRY, AND MORE!” But the problem is that they are usually advertised in such a cheesy and unbelievable way that the more discerning shoppers simply write them off as being too good to be true.
Listen to me though—there ARE government auctions, and they do offer good savings. City police and other law enforcement agencies including the military and the DNR are seizing property as either a punishment or that was gained illegally (most of the time with bad money). They are using these sales as fundraisers so obviously they are just giving them away but just like any auction if you do your homework and remain disciplined and patient you will save significant amounts of cash on quality stuff.
How do you find these auctions? Well most are advertised, often in a very cheesy manner as mentioned earlier, in local and national newspapers. They can also be found advertised on the internet. You can either do all this research yourself or you can hire one of the many list services that can do the searching for you and comes up with a list of all the government auctions that are with in your location, type of products, and date parameters. These services are usually less than 40$ and can be a good idea for the person that doesn’t have a lot of extra time for research.
That is not the only homework that you have to do be for you go to a government auctions. As you probably realize it is important to do research on the stuff that you want to buy before hand so that you don’t get stuck paying too much for something. You also want to be able to evaluate the product on hand to determine if it is in good condition and worth buying.
Just like with any auction, a government auction will have many eager sellers and it is important to not get caught up with the frenzy of a sale and pay too much for “winning” something. Set a price before hand and stick to it. As they say “deals come and deals go.”