Being fed up with some of the daft prices on eBay, coupled with pressure to use PayPal, etc, myself and another reprobate who posts here went to the viewing day arranged by Apex Auctions for the now-deceased MH Mouldings at Bognor. There were some varispeed Bridgeports, a J&S 540P and some smaller items that looked interesting, so we signed up and had a go at bidding.
The online bidding process was painful, but that's not the point. What surprised us was the high prices everything fetched. The bid prices on the Bridgeports was £1500 to £3010 (yes, that's not a typo), plus 15% auctioneer's commission, plus VAT, so that's very nearly four grand for the most expensive one. A dozen simple angle iron and wood benches with a Record #6 went for £50 - £125 each, and so on.
My question is: are these prices typical, or was there something very unusual about the bidders at Bognor? It's hard to tell with other auctions after the event, because most of these sites like Apex do not display the hammer price once the auction has ended. The only way to see the prices is to camp on the website for the last few minutes of the auction, which isn't trivial with 100+ lots and the bizarre programming of the website.
Does the collective experience of the group suggest these online industrial auctions routinely offer better, worse or wildly variable prices as compared to the more usual hobbyist sources of machines?
And which of you madmen paid £4K for a well used BP? Would you like to buy my Semco for £3K?
Alan