I had a down year with my regular gig after the Great Recession had bottomed out. I made what felt like a killing buying/selling industrial tooling at auction. (Two lots in particular, bought for $75 and $400 earned me $3500 and $32,000 respectively. The first was a gamble on something that seemed worth the chance, the other required about a full week of labor and the purchase of a cargo trailer. Those were the wins. I only had a few losses, and those weren’t too bad. I think the worst was buying for $800 and selling for $500. Of course, a lot of auctions paid for my gas, if I was lucky. Accepting I was only going to pay for gas likely prevented a lot of losses! I probably averaged $40-50/hour, net.) Sites like Hilco industrial and auctionzip are good for finding auctions. Get a lot catalog and go to inspect. Make notes on what is selling on fleabay, what it’s selling for, and most importantly, what isn’t selling. I used to shoot for quadrupling my money before shipping/fleabay fees, at least.
The $400 —> $32,000 story ended when someone contacted me to buy out what remained of the lot. The guy couldn’t figure out why I had what I was selling from my garage. He asked, and I told him where I got the tooling. He paused for a few seconds and said “So, you’re the guy.” Apparently he had sent workers there to buy things. By the time this lot came up at 8:00 in the evening, his guys had run out of cash. I’m guessing the only reason I won the lot was that his guys weren’t the only ones who had blown their budget... it was a HUGE facility. Anyway, a year after the auction, his company paid me $7,500 for one-fourth of what I got for $400 and some sweat equity. ...As for the $75–>$3500 item, I was stunned when it sold in a day. I got a message asking to talk to another person the next day. The guy needed what I had for a job and I suspect would have gone much higher than $3500. The interesting thing to me was he was able to guess who the actual buyer was. My lesson that day was that there may only be a very small market for specialized tools, but the market will pay! I modified my selling strategy for unique things after that.
The auction scene has dried up considerably with the improved economy, but there is still money to be made out there! As for me, the regular gig has been doing well since, so I’ve backed out. It was fun while it lasted, but began to feel like work and I really didn’t have my heart in it. If you like fixing atv’s, do it! The ATV-Shack or even mobile ATV repair above seem like pretty good ideas for you to think about. Whatever you do, best of luck to you!
