For sale on eBay: Vt. treasure trove
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Bill Beard, surplus property programs assistant, moves boxes of sale items into the Vermont surplus property warehouse Tuesday in Waterbury, surrounded by a phalanx of desks waiting for a new home. STEFAN HARD/TIMES ARGUS |
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By Peter Hirschfeld Vermont Press Bureau - Published: December 2, 2009
WATERBURY – In a nondescript building just north of the village of Waterbury, Bill Beard and Mark Casey oversee a trove of used merchandise that piles in daily from across the state.
"It's a pretty cool job," Casey says. "Yesterday I was putting together desks. Today I'm working on computers. Something new everyday, because you just never know what's going to come in here."
The Vermont surplus property warehouse, off Route 2, is like a flea market on steroids. The concrete floor is lined mostly with office furniture and administrative supplies – items no longer needed by the various state agencies that send their unused goods to warehouse.
But odd bits of bric-a-brac fill every nook and cranny in the cramped space. And since portions of the inventory aren't exactly flying off the shelves (film duplicator, anyone?) Vermont is getting into the business of eBay.
The state has issued a request-for-proposals seeking a vendor to help it unload obscure, but sometimes valuable, equipment no longer needed by the government that purchased them.
Terry Lamos, central services operations administrator, says it's an experiment that she hopes will bring new revenue into a retail operation that already grosses about $200,000 annually.
"I think there's somebody out there that could use this stuff," says Lamos, gesturing toward a section of strange-looking objects stacked in a backroom. "But we need a broader forum to match them with the right person. Hence eBay."
The online auction site has spawned an industry of eBay experts who essentially sell items on consignment. With staff resources already stretched, Lamos says, it makes sense for the state to farm out the selling of merchandise that would otherwise go to scrap.
"I can't stand to throw it away," says Lamos, who has already tried to unload the goods on Craig's List and other online classified sites. "We hope this is a way to bring in some new revenue."
The stock of eBay items includes microfiche developers, film duplicators, and other vending-machine-sized objects recognizable only to professionals in the niche industries that use them. Lamos estimates the value of the arcane instruments at about $50,000. The vendor, if one is selected, will get a piece of the final selling price for each item.
"This is to make sure we get a price at all on items that don't necessarily move with our audience on Craig's List and other online sites and the foot traffic through the store," says Gerry Myers, Commissioner of Buildings and General Services, the department that oversees surplus property. "We're going into eBay and getting a professional to run it on an experimental basis to see if this is another avenue to be able to move surplus property."
Vermont already contracts with auction services to move heavy equipment like plow trucks, excavators, state vehicles, boats and ATVs. Last year, those auctions took in nearly $1 million.
For Casey, Beard and Lamos, who comprise the whole of the surplus property staff, the addition of eBay offers another outlet for some of the weirder items they oversee. Like, for instance, the antique embalming machine.
"We've got a couple of theories on that one," say Casey.
The device, used on actual human bodies in the early 1900s, was discovered in a cabinet when the surplus store moved from East Montpelier to its current location, off Route 2 in Waterbury, last year. Casey found a similar machine online selling for $5,100.
"I said 'Terry, I think we scored here,'" Casey says.
The first thousand dollars takes the machine, which, like every other item in the warehouse, is priced well below retail. Casey and Beard pride themselves on getting low-price goods into the hands of low-income shoppers. On Monday, Casey says, he helped a couple of cash-strapped entrepreneurs set up their new office for less than $500.
The most popular and profitable items, by far, are the boxes and boxes of folding knives set up near the main entrance. Genuine Swiss Army and Buck knives go for pennies on the retail dollar. They were confiscated at airport security checkpoints around the state.
"These are donated by people who wish to fly," says Beard, who arrives at work every morning by 4, mainly because his wife "can't stand the smell of coffee."
The new location has the added bonus of being right next to an actual flea market that draws hundreds of bargain hunters on summer weekends. Market vendors are actually some of the store's best customers, buying items from the warehouse in hopes of turning a profit the same day.
Myers calls the eBay plan a no-cost experiment that can only improve state revenues.
As Casey puts it, "we're doing our part, a dollar at a time, to reduce the state deficit."
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