Thread by @gravislizard

so i won some lots at the art institute of seattle liquidation auction and the experience was not really what i expected

i have a lot of bitter feelings about "ebay vultures", my highly pejorative term for the people i've seen clearing out every single item at goodwill that might score more than $25 on ebay

i think i've posted about this before. while thrift stores and yard sales are not a replacement for a functioning economy, there was a time when they were at least an option for getting things you "can't afford"

the fantasy scenario is the 22 year old photographer making minimum wage who finds an $800 lens for $65 at a goodwill and for the next five years that thing carries them artistically in a way that a lens they could afford at MSRP never would

so i get mad about the ebayers because i think they deplete all that stuff. <centrist voice> i think poor people deserve Access To Bargains

so i got informed about this auction, and all the lots were starting at $0, no reserve. there was a ton of stuff in there that was definitely Valuable, at least in my estimation. so my immediate assumption was that I was in competition with a bunch of Pricks

i've never met any of these imagined ebayers, I've just seen people who were clearly Doing That at thrift stores, and I've otherwise Come To Know, somehow, that this phenomenon happens.

so my perception of this set was a bunch of joyless people buying things they know nothing about and don't care about, throwing them up on ebay for minimum effort and maximum profit, and probably pretty unpleasant to interact with

so I went to the place yesterday to collect my stuff. it was fairly chaotic - the people running it, supposedly professional liquidators, didn't really have any plan for how to handle everything. this is exactly what I anticipated.

they didn't know where stuff was, they were surprised to find the elevators broken, they didn't know how to get access to the parking garage. hey, who's surprised? they're genuine professional vultures, making profit opportunistically off someone elses garbage

also these sales happen very very quickly so there probably isn't a lot of time to learn what they're actually selling and so on. so whatever.

what i was surprised by is the demographics of the other buyers. I expected them to literally all be gruff men with beards who didn't speak unless they thought you were trying to fuck them over

first, it looked like about a third to half of the people there were married couples with 2-4 kids in tow. that was surprising to me, particularly because bringing small children (they were all small) to such a chaotic event is a pretty bad idea.

there were people trying to move 500 pounds of machinery down staircases with no equipment and no real strategy (since *nobody* expected the stairs situation) and putting a bunch of little kids underfoot there is, heh, well! a pretty fuckin bad idea!

one of the lots was a rack completely jam packed with stainless steel commercial kitchenware. i joked with friends when I was bidding online, "who would bid on this?" dude happened to park his winnings next to mine and i had a chance to talk to him

he said he was going to poach a couple of decent pots for himself, then donate the rest to his kids school, which had a commercial kitchen big enough to use it all. guy had spent like $700.

there was a couple that had bought four industrial sewing machines with 3/4HP motors, like what you use to sew leather. they were loading them into a uhaul van

they hadn't brought any proper tools, and in the middle of trying to load it another guy came up and asked if they were willing to sell any of them, and they confirmed that they only wanted one of the four but had to buy the whole lot

basically, most of the people i interacted with were pretty obviously there for themselves, not just to make a blind profit. I was surprised and kind of felt like a dick.

there was also a little bit of that spontaneous-community effect, when a bunch of people are in a place for themselves instead of on someone elses time so they start offering to help anyone who looks like they need help

i guess the reason i am talking about this is that i was very wrong in my assumptions and i'm not really sure why. i could have been right but i just wasn't.