Some recent fun data from my government auction platform: the distribution of winning bids across >100k listings from the last 6 months or so. X axis is a log scale of bidding price, and Y axis is the number of listings sold at that price.

People love to bid (and win!) things for $10 – you can get a lot of stuff for that much, like a classroom full of desks and furniture. The expensive part is transporting it all.

The median listing is a 1997 Ford Ranger that went for $210 – vehicles are by far the most popular thing that people bid on, at a wide range of prices and conditions.

There's a link below to the interactive chart and a bit more context on the data – you can filter by category to see how the curve changes for things like vehicles or Real Estate.

Source: The Govauctions.app auction database, including listings from GSA, GovDeals, PublicSurplus and more.

Tools: SVG and Javascript

Interactive version of the chart, where you can sort by category and see listings at a given bid range: https://govauctions.app/research/what-the-government-sells-for

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player__piano

11 comments

  1. A former national guard building sold on one of these auction sites in my area.

  3. I don’t see anything like that available. Seems like bad data

  4. What’s the actual link to these auctions, OP?

    Not to your display? Maybe I want to buy an electronic school bus

  5. I check gov deals every now and then, and I can’t believe what some of the stuff goes for, you’re not getting many ford trucks for $210. People bid on anything that looks half way decent.

  6. I can confirm that. When we retire equipment from our lab, instruments that are originally upwards of $100k are sold for less than a few hundred bucks. Often times the biggest challenge is finding a working product/software key to use the instrument.

  7. A guy down the street from me bought a pallet of 20 TVs (from like 24 to 32 inches) from the Canadian government and is selling them on Facebook marketplace.  I think a few of them might be broken, but it only cost him $20 to buy so pretty sure he’s going to make a profit on it.

  9. I am always on govdeals and haven’t seen any vehicle go for under a grand (other than really bad ones) since nam. Granted there’s probably less popular areas but still I feel like this data is regional at best

  11. The best place I’ve found to buy this stuff is govplanet. You just have to realize how much tax and fees will be. They do an excellent job of documenting issues, lots of pics and videos. It’s not just government auctions, but alsorental companies, oilfield, mining, construction etc use them to auction stuff.

    I buy and sell equipment, trucks etc sometimes as a side hustle. I got a 2016 F250 6.7 diesel, 175K miles, steel bed with tool box’s and a fuel tank that is 5k new on it. It was in relatively good shape for a work truck. It ran great no blow by. I paid $4500 for it. After taxes, registration etc I was in it like $5500 and sold it in 5 days for $9500.

    I got a 98 5.9 Cummins 2500 with 270K miles, no blow by for like 1500-2K, it was in ok shape and sold it for 5k in a few days.

    Got a Kabuto zero turn, MSRP is 12K, it had 1.5 hours on it and was new. Kabuto corporate makes dealers punt stuff to auctions that sit on the lot to long to make room for new stuff. I paid $5500 for it, after taxes was in it about 6K. I sold it to my BFF for 7K because he bought some land and needed a large zero turn. I could have got 8-9500 for depending on how firm I was to a normal person.

    They have a bunch of older trucks/cars that sell between 700-1500 all the time. You need a trailer to get them, it’s their policy for any vehicle or equipment sold.

    There’s other gov auction sites like govdeals to. I saw two blackhawcks on govdeals down the road from me the other day. I don’t have 2 Mil for one.

    There’s some cool deals on there. Just make sure it’s not 8 hours away or something.

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