I remember hearing that most dealers at an auction won't let 'fresh meat' get away with buying a car at dealer prices. In other words, if a new face is spotted and determined to be a civilian, then any car that person is bidding on will get pushed up in price even if there is no real interest.

I know that when I went with friends of friends, they provided me with a 'backstory' if anyone asked me about my creds, and several people did. This was over ten years ago, in the NYC area, and my memory is not great, but I wonder if this is typical for those who have tried, or who are in the know.

Thanks!

Interesting topic.

Can you conditionally bid at a public/dealer/repo auctions and make payment if your inspection turns ok?

dealcather said:Interesting topic.

Can you conditionally bid at a public/dealer/repo auctions and make payment if your inspection turns ok?

No. Win the bid, you bought the car.

exsynner said:I remember hearing that most dealers at an auction won't let 'fresh meat' get away with buying a car at dealer prices. In other words, if a new face is spotted and determined to be a civilian, then any car that person is bidding on will get pushed up in price even if there is no real interest.

I know that when I went with friends of friends, they provided me with a 'backstory' if anyone asked me about my creds, and several people did. This was over ten years ago, in the NYC area, and my memory is not great, but I wonder if this is typical for those who have tried, or who are in the know.

Thanks!

Dealers are notoriously attuned to the bottom line. They don't care enough about your one-car-purchase to spent a penny of their money crushing a new face.

I don't know what the rules are in NYC but in CA, true "wholesale auto auctions" are not open to the general public (those without a CA dealer's license).

taxmantoo said:beadedmonkey said:Manheim and other wholesale auto auctions require you to hold a valid CA dealers license in order to register and buy their cars.

The problem comes in when you have a dealer, but you want to see the car at auction. Your dealer can possibly get banned if he makes a habit of bringing non-employees with him and gets caught.

I don't know that much about it. I used to be in this business to a certain degree. I never attended one. The bank I worked at sold their repos through Manheim and I knew that you had to have a dealers license to purchase a vehicle from them.

We sold the totally wrecked/damaged/no ins to CoPart or this small mom&pop wrecking yard, whichever brought in the biggest bid based on the PDA report.

LAwoodtiger said:I have purchased the last two cars with cash, from private sellers that I have found on recycler.com. I have found that you can get a significant discount if you flash the cash.

BMW 325: asking $14500, purchased for $12400
Honda Prelude: asking $3200, purchased for $2300

I have a Mercedes, asking $32k, will sell for $25k in cash. I'll meet you in the alley between 4th and 5th streets tonight, let's say around 3am?

i only buy cars from enthusiasts who baby their cars and have all records from day one. Also i never ever pay more than KBB TRADE-IN. No personal taxes in GA for person to person sales, too.

Auction/Lease turn-ins all bad mojo man.

Oh yeah i got a free +7/100K platinum warrant thrown in on the deal too since he just wanted to sell the car to get something fast the next day (he paid for the warranty xfer).

I vote going the GSA route as well.

I've purchased 2 cars from there and never had any issues. Normally you'll find 3-5 year old cars for anywhere between 4 and 8 thousand.

I just purchased a 2003 Olds Alero for 6k.

Selected State: North Carolina (NC)

North Carolina

No Auction Houses.

Surrounding Area

Georgia

Atlanta Auto Auction

South Carolina

Rawls Auto Auction

Tennessee

Chattanooga Auto Auction

Virginia

Richmond FMC
Fredericksburg Auto Auction

GSA Website

Just to share my own experience.

I went to a public police auction in my town. They had tons of stuff they were auctioning off, and a few vehicles. There was a Medium sized MART(Massachusetts Area Regional Transportation) bus on the lot with about 5 other cars. All they told us about the cars, is that they were all driven down here. Now when bidding came to the MART bus it reached $500. I mean the thing was a decently beat up municipal vehicle. Then the last vehicle was to be auctioned, it was a large van. Turns out the guy who bidded on the MART bus wanted the van not the bus and was confused. So he requested if he could withdraw his bid. The auctioneer allowed it, sold the van for $300 and then offered the bus back uo. However most people were leaving at this point. As the auctioneer went lower, and lower, and lower I raised my hand when he said with embarrassment "$20"?

So I walked out of there with a 15 Person bus that had been used to transport prisoners back and forth to community service jobs. It had a handicap wheelchair lift thing in it and an intercom system! Among that it had only 63,000 miles on a Ford Diesel V8, Bus was based on F-350 setup.

Now questioning the police officers that were on duty there. I asked them if I could drive it home, my house was about 5 minutes away( a short drive on the highway included). Now I figured this wouldn't be allowed, but the cops said to me "yeah go for it, its yours" and so I took down his name and badge and drove it home. As I was driving the already cracked side windows began smashing in a bit, and of course the brakes BARELY worked. I somehow arrived alive at my house.

I called up a friend of my dad's who runs a tow company. He came and towed the vehicle from my Mother's (I was 18 when this happened) to his house where he removed the wheel chair lift. His wife was losing ability of her legs and to this day they still use this lift in their personal van. He paid me about $300 plus a free tow for the lift setup. My Father had the engine removed and replaced in one of his many work trucks. The transmission had a warranty still on it and only about 3,000 miles on it. We sold that to someone in town for $300. The tires were ALL BRAND new, like still had the stickers on em and everything. We sold those for about $300. Then we scrapped the bus for probably another $200 or so.

So it was a pretty good investment off $20.

Bottom line, you can get LUCKY at auctions. Just has to be right place right time. IE: Maybe it will rain out and no one goes

Great story Mike! You probably could have also just slapped that puppy on eBay and made a few thousand $$