The Surplus Property Auction at Virginia Tech - Computers, Appliances, Furniture and More!

Nestled in the beautiful town of Blacksburg, VA is an old K-Mart building that was purchased by VPI, or Virginia Tech, for the purpose of storing and auctioning off their old equipment, electronics, vehicles and other assorted items. Of course, perhaps the most exciting feature of these auctions, which are held once a month on a single Saturday, are the various computers up for bids.

At one of these auctions, one can find a variety of used computers, both Macs and PCs. Some are in various conditions from disrepair to near perfect. Some have all of their components as well as some version of Linux installed so that potential bidders may test them out on the Thursday before the auction. The stars of the show however are the assorted Apple computers.

At one of these auctions, you can find just about anything from a Power Mac G3 to an iMac Intel Core Duo. Many of these were pulled from a lab or various departments as the university upgrades its hardware and faculty trade up for newer equipment. These machines are arguably the main attractor of serious bidders to the auction, drawing people from as far away as New York who have the intent of refurbishing any older Macs they bid on and win and then turning around and selling them at a profit on the used market on sites such as eBay.

Its always fun to browse through the items available and see what sort of configuration the PCs and Macs have. Its also interesting to see how much people are willing to bid for older laptops that have a Pentium III or 4 processor and a rather insignificant amount of RAM installed and a tiny hard drive.

Of course, many times, you can find multiples, or lots, of computers that you can bid on. These are popular among those that are looking either for parts or machines that they can refurbish with newer parts and more RAM and install an operating system on them to sell them for profit.

I’d say that the best part of the auction is the fact you can get in for free and simply people watch and explore the items up for bids. For more information about the Virginia Tech Surplus Property auctions, visit www.purch.vt.edu and click on the Surplus Property link. There you can find a list of auction dates, links to other government auctions as well as a pdf file listing the items available at the next auction.