Won stuff at an industrial auction. Now what? (now with 37% more updates)

[Jeff7]

You could ask TridentT to do it for you.

Where's he at right now anyway? Did anyone outfit him with a GPS tracking tag?

 

[Spacehead]

The cheapest option is going to be renting a Penske truck and doing it yourself.

Not gonna happen. At least not anyone in engineering - they don't let us travel much in the first place, unless it's by specific and extremely firm customer request.

Call Rog's & Birkmire 😛

Seriously, getting it yourself isn't an option? 6 pallets isn't much. One would assume there would be a forklift at the auction site or make arrangements to have one there if needed.
Start looking at movers then.

 

[mikeford]

On the CYA vs get something done scale I think you need to focus on CYA. Its going to be FUBAR unless angels intervene, so I would skip any effort finding the best or cheapest or any other est, just read the auction brochure and do what it tells you to do, don't make any decision of any kind, just follow the directions.

 

[kranky]

Any update?

 

[Jeff7]

Any update?

Waiting on a quote from a moving company that's close to the auction site.


I was given an official deadline today: We've got more than a week until they unceremoniously declare our purchases as "abandoned," so we're not screwed. That's a plus.

 

[kranky]

Sounds like things are going to work out. Good!

 

[mmntech]

Going into a distant auction unprepared, expect to pay for the education you are about to get.

This is how I pictured the whole thing going down. 😀
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x15mjhp_bart-s-factory_fun

 

[MongGrel]

This is how I pictured the whole thing going down. 😀
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x15mjhp_bart-s-factory_fun

😉

 

[Jeff7]

Sounds like things are going to work out. Good!

- A moving company has picked up the items from the first round. A bit pricey, but it's still a good deal on the stuff for the company. Given their minimum fees and such, it might not have made a difference anyway, furniture or not.

- A list of leftovers was sent out afterward. (Including five offices' worth of furniture - no one bought them during the regular auction, even for $1 each.)
There were some things of mild interest to us, but nothing my department manager deemed worth bothering with.
However, I had a distinct hunch that a few of the items would be very useful a year from now, and if I could get them for dirt-cheap....sure, hell with it, I'll take the chance and go for it anyway.
So, I called to investigate a little further.

- One thing led to another, and I ended up learning about another item that was available. It was an item that we'd wanted from the start, but never got approval to bid. An item that was the main reason we originally registered to bid, though we ended up missing out due to other....issues. But it's an item of considerable value to us, and available at a lower price than the starting bid, and without any additional fees since they just wanted it out of the building. The original (and only) bidder never paid for it 😱 so it was up for grabs before the building is unceremoniously emptied so that it can also be sold.

Still sight-unseen, yes, but based on additional information learned about the rest of the equipment, this machine should be in damn fine condition. It may have even been calibrated regularly. There were "maintenance-performed" stickers visible in the photos of it, and the keyboard, mouse, and keypads look like they've hardly been touched. It's roughly 15% of the cost of what a comparable factory refurb would be. The accessories alone are easily worth the total price we paid.


Yay me.

 

[Jadow]

I've heard of riggers being used

late and night, eyesight is a little fuzzy, had to read that 3 times to make sure you didn't write what I thought you wrote!

 

[Jeff7]

The first batch of stuff arrived. The movers did a very nice job of it. Everything was wrapped and packaged well, and the office furniture is some top-notch stuff. Some of it is even made using regular wood, not veneered or paper-faced particleboard. The pieces that do use particleboard are sturdy, built with >1" particleboard.
The electronics and equipment is mostly in excellent shape. Even some of the things that were marked as "received" nearly 10 years ago still look great. (Shop toolboxes with hardly a scuff on them? 😵)

We also snagged some of the "last-chance" items for about 5% of the price of factory refurbs.

I also ended up with some swag. 😎 ++16GB RAM, ++Corsair case.

No hard drives though. When they marked a machine "clean," that probably meant "hard drive has been put through a shredder." Oh well.
Edit: Oh ho, there we go. A black little SSD is nestled in the bottom of the case. A 256GB Samsung SSD.


...sweet holy piss. 😱
6-core Hyperthreaded i7-3930K CPU, 3.2GHz.
Beats the hell out of my i5.




The machine: On schedule for factory-technician-overseen on-site disassembly, crating, with delivery in less than a week.
Expected total delivered cost: 20% of a factory refurb. This thing was also serviced 2x a year by the factory.

Going into a distant auction unprepared, expect to pay for the education you are about to get.
...

:whiste:

 

[edro]

It was an item that we'd wanted from the start.

What was it?

 

[corwin]

What was it?

Damn it...his dodgy description got me curious too..marked

 

[Jeff7]

What was it?

Damn it...his dodgy description got me curious too..marked

Twas intentional - I don't want to make it too easy for a Google search to be able to sniff me out here. 😉

It's a 4000lb piece of industrial machinery, bought at a very good price. The accessories alone are worth more than what we paid, even with shipping and rigging added in.
I guess no one else wanted to be arsed with figuring out how to get a big machine through a small doorway. Doing that properly cost $1k. Yes, please, thank you.
Or maybe they didn't know how it was used or maintained.


Or maybe we don't know that it has the still-alive brain of Hitler sitting in the undercarriage, just waiting for the thing to be powered up and connected to the Internet.