Here was your chance in Chamberlain SD this week as Ted Petrak worked dilgently to sell the surplus equipment from the local school.

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One worthwhile stop near Rapid City is the Museum at Ellsworth AFB. They have a very nice display of static aircraft and tours are available of the base. If you are lucky enough you can see a B-1 bomber coming in for a landing just adjacent to the museum

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I-90 in South Dakota has a speed limit of 75 mph and at least 10 billboards per mile advertising Mount Rushmore, Wall Drug, Deadwood, and other notable stops for a bored weary family.

Curiousity got the best of when I had to see exactly what the Corn Palace in Mitchell SD really was.

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If you do, you missed out on a great bargain to buy a small motel with full occupancy in Marion South Dakota this week. The property was offered by auction by Chuck Sutton and Tom Souvignier The property sold for 60,000$ , a real deal if you wanted a very nice place to live with rental income

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Had the pleasure of visiting with Denise Simpson of Nixon Auctioneers this week. These Auctioneers are very well known across the country and travel long distances to do auctions in their specialty of Antique Farm Equipment over the past 27 years.

Keep up the good work !

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Published by ukinfo under Auction News on June 8th, 2007

Spare parts made for Concorde - the world’s first and only commercial supersonic transport - are to be auctioned in Toulouse in late September, organisers said today.

The Aerotheque Association said it arranged the Sept. 28-Oct. 1 sale to generate funds for a planned airplane park in Toulouose.

The auction includes 835 lots, from hulking spare parts to paraphernalia and pilot uniforms, and was expected to bring in about $US337,000

The Concorde made its maiden voyage 1969, but was retired in 2003 amid ballooning costs and dwindling ticket sales after a crash in 2000 that killed 113 people. The craft had been commercialised by British Airways and Air France.

The planned museum park, Aeroscopia, is to open in 2010 and promote the history of Aerospatiale Toulouse, the maker of Concorde and the precursor of giant plane-maker Airbus.

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Porsche – This red 991 Porsche Carrera 2 has 107,000 miles on it.

Gruppe – “Norman’s Woe” is signed by Charles Gruppe.

Newton – This oil on board of two palms and moonlight by Sam Newton from the 1970s is 24 by 48in.

Nutting – This colored print signed by Wallace Nutting is entitled “Overflowing Cup.”

Art Nouveau firescreen – This early 20th century English Art Nouveau firescreen has a bead work on board panel with a wood frame.

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Auction business appeals to family
Dad, daughter, sons will sell just about everything

Claire Bush
Special for The Arizona Republic
Jun. 7, 2007 12:00 AM
Things have changed since auctions began in ancient Babylon around 500 B.C.

Then, the hottest items on the block were women of marriageable age, and the merchandise was sold “as is.” Today, people are no longer considered marketable goods, but just about everything else, from RVs to ranch land, have been on the block at a sale held by Cunningham & Associates, Arizona’s oldest family-owned auction house.

The third-generation business began with a single farm auction in rural Black Oak, Ark., in 1947. Items up for bid included used linoleum, a John Deere tractor and eight geese.
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Business grew over the next several decades, and by the 1970s, Bob Cunningham had relocated his family to Arizona. Today, sons George and Carl and daughter Audrey work alongside him to vend everything from heavy equipment and land parcels to jewelry and aircraft.

The company specializes in liquidation auctions, handling more than 90 percent of the bankruptcy and secured creditor sales in Arizona. In 2006, the company held 97 auctions.

According to George, the chief auctioneer and appraiser, bankruptcy filings in the state are leveling off after a spike the past several years. However, he sees an upward trend for real estate, both commercial and residential, that will hit the auction block through bankruptcy within the next five years.

Cunningham’s auctions are “no reserve,” meaning there’s no set price for an opening bid. The method guarantees a sale, although the price an item fetches can raise eyebrows.

“Most of the people who come to us really don’t know what their assets are worth,” George says. “Especially with real estate, a property is going to be worth as much as a buyer will pay for it.

“You don’t put a parcel on the market for $1 million and have a buyer offer you $2.5 million, but at a no reserve auction, the bidding prices can surprise you,” he adds. “We recently sold a 32-acre landfill outside of Glendale for $4.7 million, which was substantially more than what the seller anticipated.”

Carl Cunningham, the firm’s real estate broker, joined 10 years ago after a brief detour into medical school at Texas A&M. “My dad was selling a couple of HMOs at the time,” he says. “That made me reconsider.”

Carl has no regrets about his career move. “Each day is different. Besides real estate, we sell everything from phone systems to supersonic jets, so I’ve developed a broad range of knowledge, and a broad range of buyers as well.”

The growth of Internet auction sites such as eBay has been “a tremendous help for our business,” according to George. “EBay has brought the auction method of marketing to the world. People are now familiar with the whole process. It’s increased the comfort level for buyers.”

Cunningham’s Web site, along with word of mouth, provides the majority of advertising for the company. “We get about 30,000 hits a day and have 17,000 subscribers to our site,” George says. “Right now, about 70 percent of the people at our auctions learned about us online.”

For the past sixteen years, commercial real estate investor Joe DiBazar has been a regular visitor to Cunningham’s weekly auctions, held at its south Phoenix warehouse. DiBazar, owner of AAA Full Transportation, manages a fleet of about 800 medical transportation vehicles throughout the state. “I’m a businessman myself, and I appreciate their honesty,” he says. “They don’t have gimmicks.”

Dibazar, who views the auctions as “a hobby,” recently purchased a ranch and 627-acre farmland in Winslow, which he will develop as a working cattle farm.

He usually shows up to bid every few weeks “just to see what’s new,” he says. “I like to see what’s available, and decide from there what my next project is going to be.”

Dennis Alonso of Phoenix has been a regular for the past two years. “I’ve bought and sold real estate in Arizona for 15 years,” he says. “There were more novices (at the auctions) a year ago, when everybody wanted to buy real estate and get rich. The number of actual bidders didn’t go up, though.”

Alonso has a system for his bids. “You stay rational and keep emotion out of it, and you’ll be all right,” he says. “There’s a reason the auctioneers talk fast; it’s to get you excited, but emotion should not rule over logic when you’re making a financial decision.”

Alonso has purchased property for prices ranging from $2,000 to $400,000. “It’s a treasure hunt; you can’t be too picky,” he says. “I buy commercial and residential properties. I like the no-reserve policy, because at the end, somebody’s going to go home with the items.

“With eBay, where many items are removed if they don’t meet the reserve price, you don’t have the same feeling of a true auction. At the Cunningham’s, what they promise you is that by noon on Saturday, your property will be sold.

“It’s like playing Monopoly, only for real.”

Although Carl Cunningham spends his days behind the auction block, he doesn’t survey the items for sale with an eye to purchase. “People ask us all the time if we get good deals on things,” Carl says. “Our code of ethics doesn’t allow us to bid on the items we sell. “Personally, with a 2-year-old at home, I’m on eBay a lot hunting down baby furniture. That’s the extent of my personal bidding experience.”

Bush is a freelance writer in Phoenix.

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Greg Peterson - Successful Farming

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From Russ Quinn DTN Staff Reporter

OMAHA (DTN) — Farmers have traded farm machinery for generations by the chant of an auctioneer, but some producers today are using the internet, specifically eBay, to alter their machinery lines. During the last two weeks, in fact, the world’s most-popular internet auction site reported selling 258 tractors.

The real question for many farmers when using these tools is whether internet auctions bring as much as in-person auctions. The short answer to this question is generally no, but it does depend on the age and usefulness of the tractor available for auction.

A recent study by Ohio State University examined in-person auctions vs. tractors selling on eBay. The results of this first-of-a-kind study showed that the median tractor (i.e., half of the tractors sold for a price less than this, the other half sold for more) was predicted to sell for $7,706 on eBay and for $10,996 at an in-person auction. Once the typical commissions and fees are deducted this resulted in $2,197 more from an in-person sale than from eBay. (Auction services typically charge 2.5 to 15 percent commissions, while eBay charges 1 percent, or a maximum of $250, plus a $20 listing fee).

Brian Roe, an Ohio State University associate professor of agricultural economics and one of three authors of this study, told DTN there was a distinct difference in the number of tractors that sold above and below the $20,000 level on eBay.

The online auction site offers an anti-fraud Buyer Protection Plan for business equipment purchases that refunds buyers’ outlays up to $20,000, Roe said.

This coverage protects buyers from seller fraud or undisclosed equipment defects. Anything more expensive than $20,000 is uncovered which is why newer, more expensive farm tractors are fairly sparse on eBay, even though they may offer buyers the best bargains.

“We took 10 months worth of data from eBay and Machinery Pete’s Farm Equipment FACT’s report to compare the two,” Roe said. “We also limited our study to tractors made after 1960, horsepower of 30 or more and limited the data set to 13 tractor manufacturers.” The study tracked 588 eBay sales and 1,770 in-person sales.

One farmer from Ohio, speaking anonymously to DTN, said he bought a John Deere 4010 tractor, a John Deere 148 loader and pickup truck this winter on eBay. He puts up hay and likes the John Deere 10 and 20 series of tractors to accomplish this chore.

His experiences on eBay were mostly positive. He paid $6,800 for the 4010, which was sold by a Nebraskan.

“The 4010 was in really, really good shape and was represented very well by the seller which is why I was willing to pay that much for it,” he said.

The buyer learned from this process as well. First of all, he did not factor in transportation costs right away, and he freely admitted this was a big mistake. He had to pay someone to haul the tractor back to Ohio which was fairly expensive considering current fuel costs.

“I had a buddy who hauls calf huts out to Kansas and if I had to do it over, I would have had him haul it back because backhauling costs much less,” he said.

The other thing he learned was not to assume things. His John Deere 148 loader, which he bought for $900 and was in good shape, came with what he thought was universal mounting brackets. He found out, however, it was previously attached to an International tractor and he had to find different mounting brackets for his new loader.

“You have to be sharp all the time when you are buying, or I suppose selling, something on eBay,” he said. “Scammers are out there all the time. If something sounds too good to be true then it is probably is.”

The Ohio State study concluded that from the buyer’s point of view, purchasing newer, more powerful tractors on eBay may offer the opportunity to find discounts, but buyers also must bear additional risk because they cannot be present to personally inspect the tractor.

For the seller’s point of view, eBay may be attractive because it offers flexibility of when and where to sell and also low commissions. However, for tractors sold for more than $20,000 limit of the eBay buyer protection program, the study shows that in-person auctions generate greater total seller revenue.

“For the farmer trying to sell an older tractor, eBay may offer an attractive sales outlet, but the newer tractors seem to bring considerably less than an in-person auction,” Roe, the Ohio State University professor, concluded.

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