Auction bargains - things you didn’t expect to get as cheap as you did.

[Highland Mule]

Following on from @glasshouse ’s post:

There should be an alternative thread for stuff that made way below its value

What’s the best bargain you’ve achieved at an auction? I’ll start with two that I’ve had on here before:

£20 - I only bid to help the auctioneer out as it was clear there was no reserve and no interest.

One of these - https://www.watkinshire.co.uk/heating-boilers/mbr-3-55

£5 - and would pay many more pounds to replace if needed - gives me a hot tap in my lambing shed every year since. Highly recommended.

 

[HAM135]

Bought a open top tank/bath a couple of yrs ago at a sale,don't think anyone else had realised there was a near new electric adblue in the bottom of it,got it on opening bid £5,plenty other buys that didn't work out so well though!

 

[Gulli]

Too many to count, farm sales keep me well supplied with bargains.
Probably the best deal I got was a free skidsteer

 

[Al R]

£15 for a twose single bale spike, at the time we were all small bales, that single spike took circa 1500 bales of haylage/silage and moved thousands of bales of round straw too.
it still gets used if theres 2 of us working and the manitou already has 2 on and I need more bales

 

[PSQ]

Used to see plenty, but I haven't seen a bargain at a farm sale for years, too many middle men and chancers flogging kit online now. They buy it dear, add a margin, and dangle a hook waiting for someone daft or desperate enough to come along...
- Bid enough of it up to it's 'true worth' though
The only good value at any sale has been a bacon roll and a cup of coffee, and even thats gone tits up in 2020

 

[farmerm]

Always wondered, why sell the loader attachments mid sale and stick the loader on the end? I know if I bought a telehandler I would not bid on the attachments without securing the loader but having bought the loader the attachments would be worth paying a premium on for the convenience of not having to then spend time and transport sourcing from elsewhere.

 

[Lofty1984]

Too many to count, farm sales keep me well supplied with bargains.
Probably the best deal I got was a free skidsteer

Come on how did you manage that

 

[farmerm]

Used to see plenty, but I haven't seen a bargain at a farm sale for years, too many middle men and chancers flogging kit online now. They buy it dear, add a margin, and dangle a hook waiting for someone daft or desperate enough to come along...
- Bid enough of it up to it's 'true worth' though
The only good value at any sale has been a bacon roll and a cup of coffee, and even thats gone tits up in 2020

That is my take on Auctions too.. Everything either makes roughly what I expect or considerably more.

 

[Henarar]

3 sets of dual wheels for 2 quid wasnt bad

 

[Y Fan Wen]

I had forked out about 1.5k for a made to measure electric recliner chair for Mum when she was getting frail. Dad wouldn't countenance buying another! I was looking round a furniture sale in Anglesey when I noticed 2 more than half hidden under a pile of carpets and hearth rugs. The auctioneer said '2 recliners' and I put my card up when he had dropped the asking price to 5.00 and I got them for 2.
Took them home and set one up for Dad, who was looking worried about the bank balance. 'How much did you have to fork out for these then?' ' A pound each'. 'What?!!!'
One still here 20 years later.

 

[tepapa]

I got approx £2000 worth of plastic horse rail for £70 which I was annoyed at as I nearly had it for £30. I just need to find a buyer for it now at full retail price .

 

[Goweresque]

I went to a farm sale and noticed a hydraulic fitting compression machine, a manual one. A bit old but working. And had all the dies for different size hoses. I'd been looking for one, so knew that even the manual ones were about £1500 new at the time, so was prepared to go to £500. It got knocked down to me for £80. I've never moved so fast collecting up all the dies and getting it loaded............

The best auction bargains I've ever known were in commercial auctions, bankruptcy sales mainly. Especially in big sales at the end of the day, when most of the dealers had already bought what they wanted and were busy loading rather than buying. A big hydraulic firm went bust near me some years ago and the sale went on late into the evening, I stayed right to the end and bought a whole load of items basically walking around the yard with the auctioneer and him knocking each of them down to me for a fiver.

 

[puppet]

6 foot topper for £250 15 years ago. Only needed one new blade since then.
At farm sales best deals are boxes but you need to look into the bottom of them to see the good bits which will go for £2. Got lots of tools that way.
When SFP was first delayed by the computer issues stuff was cheap but we had no spare cash that spring. Saw a 10 ton 3 year old silage trailer go for £3500. Paint was barely scratched.

 

[Clive]

X 2 one year old Ken Wotton 14t trailers - £4000 each I think, sold 20 years later for £4500 each

 

[primmiemoo]

WMI shearing hurdles. The company would sometimes put not quite firsts, and items that just hadn't sold and were in the way at their yard into farm sales.

Had two long ones at one sale, iirc £40 the pair, and three shorter ones at another sale @ about the same the three. The auctioneer said that nobody seemed to see what they were for when he saw me loading after the second sale. WMI had an order from us not long after that for various hurdles.

 

[Cowslip]

Last year a class 2009 rear butterfly mower for £4500 couldn't believe it! Only 30mins away by tractor to collect it too.

 

[Gulli]

Come on how did you manage that

A long story. I borrowed it from someone who used it for a job and left it in his shed until they sold the farm. Tried to buy it but no one would give me a price or even tell me who actually owned it. So it's still here 5 years on. Brilliant bit of kit

 

[Paddington]

A set of zig zag harrows bought for £15 at a farm auction. As I was loading them on the trailer a chap came up and said he thought I was going to take them home, paint them and use them as a novelty coat rack ! I told him I was going to stick them on the back of the tractor, but years later they are hung up on the barn wall with things dangling from them.

 

[ARW]

We were after a quad for a fencing job with poor access, we to a local farm sale with 1 in advertised as a Honda 250, 4wd, 1000 km’s, tidy, 5 years old.
went prepared to buy it, use it for the job and sell on. Got it for £2k! Very happy, thought it must have been cheap because it’s only 250cc, turns out it’s a 420cc! Still got it now
I was at a sheep breeding sale a while back, in the shed on the last line of Suffolk X shearlings, they were making £150 + a head all day, got to the last 3 pens and the shed quickly emptied as the punters all left to get crowded round the outside pens to buy Texels, got the 2nd to last pen for £110, last pen for £90!

 

[br jones]

As above ,went to lots of bankruptcy sales with dad ,one in newport where there was no one there,it was a coach builders,he bought just about everything for very little ,me i scoured the storerooms and found the coachbuilders stickers,and various other stuff in the stores ,asked auctioneer he said a pound take the lot.i had 100000 stickers or so ,sold them all for a penny each ,not bad for a 13 year old