AUCTION
The Gist: Aircore Cookware, Sony Vaios, Vintage Playboys - Sold To The Gentleman In The Blue Jogging Suit!
Free Viewing
Online retailers face the same harsh reality catalogers have confronted for years: Many purchases never make it past the front door. return to sender, scrawls the recipient, deciding in hindsight that a second food dehydrator was indeed a frivolous impulse buy. But someone else's unwanted crap may be your find of the century, and it can be yours for a price - the US Postal Service frequently auctions off these very special items at regional warehouses in San Francisco, Atlanta, and St. Paul, Minnesota.
The auction starts at 10 am, but prospective bidders should arrive an hour early while goods are on display. There are many returns-in-limbo as well as packages that simply got lost in the mail. Items are loosely organized by species in 4-foot-high steel carts, covered in see-through plastic wrap. Keep in mind that you can look but not touch, and when the bidding starts, you have to buy a whole bin of products. On the day I went to San Francisco's Mail Recovery Center, the room was stacked high with Swiss Army watches and desktop computers, including a brand new Sony VAIO 500-MHz machine. I saw new CDs, vintage Playboy s, AirCore cookware, and a library of books - some damaged, most unclaimed for 90 days in the giant, concrete-floored facility.
With $50 in hand, I decided to jump in. As the auction began, bidders filed into a windowless room full of folding chairs. Holding paddle number 103, I was about to bid on 200 CDs when a guy in a sharp gray suit started ratcheting up the price. He looked prepared: He had the mobile, the calculator, the cash - and he eventually won the Columbia House rejects for $460. Over the next hour, another bin containing 500 cookbooks went to a giant fedora for $2,000. A navy jogging suit spent tens of thousands on various crap over the course of the morning.
I asked a few top bidders why they wanted the loot. Danny Hwang, a computer science major at San Jose State University, showed me his winning bid on $500 worth of calculators - not math-nerd devices like TI-82s, but your simple four-function bean counters in different sizes and colors. Hwang expected to double his return on eBay and other online auction sites. Another bidder, Bruce Kizler, gobbled up VHS and DVD movies for his two San Francisco video stores. He paid approximately $4,000 for three lots of videotapes and two of DVDs, and expected a 50 to 80 percent profit when he resells them for $10 to $15 each.
During high bids, a hush fell over the dozen or so real players, who hugged the room's back wall so they could closely watch competitive bids. If you want to be among them, come prepared with cash or credit - and bring a big truck.
US Postal Service: www.usps.com (search: postal auction).
STREET CRED
Springboard: Exploring the Digital Age
Nestler Synthese CAD
Fab Force SK1 Fins
Free Flight: From Airline Hell to a New Age of Travel, by James Fallows
Spaceman
Sharpeworld
ThinkPad TransNote
ReadMe
Music
Bizarro Comics
Multimedia: From Wagner to Virtual Reality, edited by Randall Packer and Ken Jordan
Memory Key, Q., and Thumbdrive
Just Outta Beta
Cosmonaut Keep, by Ken MacLeod
Postal Auction of Damaged and Unclaimed Goods
Contributors
