Event Coverage Big auction in Brillion Wisconsin this week

I have been helping organize the estate of a good friend of mine who passed away about a year and a half ago, a massive collection of cars and car parts, lots of big Oldsmobile V8 stuff as well as Buick nailhead and some early Hemi bits, 3 and 4 speed stick transmissions and tons of stick parts, boxy 60's bucket seats, Snap-on tools and all kinds of good bits to build cars with and/or resell. Not my auction but I helped set it up, just want to spread the word.

Check it out here
https://www.hansenauctiongroup.com/auctions/detail/bw114672

Inspection day is tomorrow, Wednesday the 19th and it ends on Monday the 24th.

It's been a really big job, but his sister and brother in law, who have been the executors of his estate, have been really good about not just scrapping everything, so some of his friends got together and we've been working on setting this up for a year and a half. Just trying to find a home for all this stuff so it doesn't end up in the dumpster, there's a lot of really cool stuff here. The auction company will ship stuff all over if the item is of a reasonable size.

Here's a handful of preview pics I took for the flyer, but the real pics are all in the auction, it's already up and running. Everything starts at $1 and there's no reserves on anything.










The red car above is a '65 Jetstar 1 with factory 4 speed, the white one and the one next to it are both '65 Starfires.

 

Wow. Lotta stuff. Seems like being there is the best way to find something a person may need.
Best of luck!

 

This is what we do for our friends.

 

We had a really good, busy preview day today so I'm very hopeful that the auction goes well. I feel like there was enough people there that nothing really good is going to have to get scrapped, there were plenty of guys with note pads checking out stuff really closely, which is what we were hoping for.

 

Saw all of the stuff on the Hansen Auctions website as they are kinda my go to time waster on the old interweb. Really good to see everything cataloged, listed and hopefully go to a good home for decent money. Congrats to everyone who worked to make it happen

 

Good on ya and the other friends for helping out the family! Good karma coming your way!
Nice stash with some good looking parts and cars. Well organized too. Hopefully most all of it finds good homes...

 

I will be bidding!!!

 

Came home from work early, feeling ill. What am I going to do laying on the couch all day?
Geez, spent the last 4 hours looking through this auction! Well, time passes quickly when you’re hypnotized by finding a good deal or rare part.

 

Rest****ured, I bought lots of*****. Was exciting to watch. I think it went pretty well, lots of bargains for bargain shoppers and some really nice results for John's family, plus most everything sold for at least the opening bid, which is nice. I'll post a pic of my haul if I can get it all in one shot.

 

I wrote down a few random items as I went through the auction. I would have actually bid if I didn’t have to pick up on a Tuesday or Wednesday. I’m at the kiddie corner of the state.
Glad to hear the family did good!

 

"I would have actually bid if I didn’t have to pick up on a Tuesday or Wednesday"

that is a problem with hanson having to come on a certain date and then they hound you when you don't pick a specific time after the auction is over on that other link. sometimes you are busy on the few pickup dates they allow. they also don't mind if you come early though then your checkout time., they are trying to cut down everyone showing up at the same time, they try to get it spread out. Kind of horse a piece because then they have enough guys to help load.

Heard that a few people that had auctions thru them refuse to have them again, not sure why. I know the last time i picked stuff up at a location they told us that they are having at least 2 more auctions but they are changing auctioneers, not happy with them and woudn't speculate any farther than that to us at that time. I know 1 party wasn't happy how long it took to get paid afterwards, they were use to getting checks almost immediately not waiting over a month for them.

I never sold thru them and just participated as a buyer this company. for me, i am mostly happy with them.

 

Saw a lot of engine parts I was almost interested in. Why would they post engines without the pectinate details such as a picture of the casting number, date code, ect....? Yes I can tell it's a big/small block GM but that doesn't tell me what it is. There is a world of difference between a 265 and a 350. The same applies for heads and if.you are looking to put something together with specific date codes or want to build a certain type engine these details are important. They didn't even take pictures of the ports on the heads. So unless you were bidding on scrap metal, you were rolling the dice as to what you might be buying. The only way to be sure what your were bidding on was to be able to drive up and spend the day and look it over, then drive back at their convenience to pick it up if you won the bid. Glad the family did OK, but had the auction company had their act a little more together they probably could have made even more.

 

I noticed that too. I was casually looking, but will always pick up Pontiac stuff if I think I’ll use it down the road. Many photos were too fuzzy for me to read the numbers. Many intake manifolds would have a clear picture of the FIRING ORDER, but no usable date or casting code pics.

 

Yes, sometimes their description could be better than just diesel engine but they do have alot of auctions going and i mentioned above how some of the sellers weren't happy but they do have plenty of repeat sellers too that they must be keeping happy having them as return business. I know 1 trailer company that lists items through them all the time when they have the consignment one going and they have been running auctions every other month for a company worth around $250 million selling off all their old junk.

But that is with all auctions, they get some stuff right but other things they could improve on but when you are auctioning stuff in all fields you cannot be an expert in all fields. me and my partner like buying things from them to flip because of the time restraints and not knowing what they are selling. you can get deals. just need to watch them, so easy naked in your favorite chair at home.

 

We spent 3 months there just cleaning and organizing stuff into lots as best we could, the amount of time it would have taken to find every date code and casting number on all of that stuff would have been insane, there were well over 2000 individual lots. But I do agree some of the picture taking could have been a lot better, we did have them redo some of the pics after the initial run but there's only so much we can do.

I would have liked to see them promote the tools more, and I could nitpick about pictures and whatnot, but overall they did a pretty decent job considering the magnitude of the auction. To do Ebay-level listings on each item would have taken years, the estate needed to be settled.

67Drake, if I would have known I could have gotten you a later pickup date, we had a couple guys call in and request that and we set them up, I only live like 5 minutes away. That's alright though, I'm just glad we kept it all out of the scrap dumpster, which happens all too often with collections like this.

 

As I was going through the auction I thought to myself what a huge project this was. Kind of like moving, in my mind I’m thinking “yeah, take this stuff from point A and move it to point B”, but in reality it’s all the little things that make it take forever! Certainly not trying to offend!
I was just explaining why I didn’t get anything there. The family is lucky to have guys like you to help.

 

Time. Time is money and the amount of employee expense to get all the details listed is prohibitive. I watch a lot of online auctions and few if any have in depth details on that sort of stuff

 

I agree that time is money, but if they are taking pictures of the engines and parts anyway, why can't they take the 10 seconds it takes to find the numbers and snap a picture of it. Most good auction companies have subject matter experts and while a car parts guy wouldn't know every part's value they know what people want to know and can teach the camera people to take pics of the numbers. If taking those extra seconds per picture brings in people looking for and willing to pay for a particular part being auctioned, everyone wins. The seller makes more which in turn means the auction house makes more. There are threads where people have found rare cars that no longer have the rare engine in it. If someone was keeping some rare and desirable parts, how wrong is it for an auction company to come in and not put forth the effort to do the job right. If you gave a kid a good camera, paid him $`17 an hour to take pics, and gave him 10 hours to take detailed pictures they would still only have less than $200 in doing the job right (yes i put in extra for wear and tear on the camera). A minimum effort auction company has friends of the family organize everything, takes weak pictures, and then puts it on line so they really don't even have to work at selling it. But, as stated previously; If the family is happy then it is all good in the end. They lost someone special and thankfully good friends helped them to get through it.

 

Another one of the guys helping there used spray paint to highlight some of the casting numbers, especially for intakes and bellhousings, and they did get pretty good pics of those. I think if we hadn't done that, most of the stuff wouldn't have had pics of casting numbers. We would have done more with blocks and such but we just ran out of time.

I think they took a total of over 11,000 pictures for the auction (they said a minimum of 5 per lot, some had more but a few had less), that was a lot of pictures to sort through and categorize. We went through and found some that needed to be corrected or swapped around, but it's tough with that much stuff. If you spent a minute on each pic, thats 188 labor hours just to take pictures alone.

 

that is one thing with these style auction companies, they don't need an expert on what the stuff is worth because they start each auction at a dollar and let us buyers decide the price. that is why they have so many followers, we are hoping for that hidden deal which we find quite often. The auction company just wants to help the people just to get rid of it in a timely matter so they can move on. you take it to some other auction company if you want close to appraisal value out of it where they will make sure you have all documentation and even then you might not meet the reserve, here it is gone no matter what. Just remember less the auction company puts in the description, less you can argue with them misrepresenting the item. it was up to you to do your due diligence at these type of auctions.

 

It's hard to believe how much 1 guy with a bad back could accumulate!
I do agree with snoc653, the photographers could have done a better job.
That auction cost me a grand!

 

Ya I wish they didn’t have the preview on Wednesday and pickup on a Wednesday. And for the most part the pics*****ed bad. Stacks of rims and just a pic of the tread of tires. Buick drums no pics of inside of them. I would of bid on a lot of stuff but I passed due to*****ty pics and pickup middle of week. Everyone could of made out a lot better if the auction company did there job better but I can see the magnitude of stuff there. But it doesn’t take any longer to take a pic of important details of the item. Good to see the stuff find a good home. Squablow glad you helped your buddy out he is smiling down on you and proud of you. That had to be a monumental task to organize all that. Take care u did good.

 

"Ya I wish they didn’t have the preview on Wednesday and pickup on a Wednesday."

Yes, that drives my partner nuts. it is amazing how many auction services don't work the weekends anymore. Years ago that was their prime time but as time goes on it is getting harder to find an auction company that works weekends now. My buddy likes to travel up here on a saturday but when we have stuff to pick up at the big farm auction place in Il. screws him up because they won't load on weekends anymore since the kids took over.

It is amazing how auction companies think people can just take off of work just like that or have all this free time to come on 1 or 2 days only right after the auction was over. Somepeople need to schedult time off in advance not if they win an item at auction and then they need to figure in their lost pay too for that day.

Lucky me i don't have a job so i can take off whenever if needed but many can't so that keeps the bidding down on some items but as a buyer i am not complaining. Last item from them we paid $550 for plus a 2 hour road trip in the middle of the week but we got $1800 back out of it and all we did was put fresh grease in the zerks. But I was available on a weekend so they could come and pick the item up

 

I made it through the first 800+ pages (of 2500+?) and stopped looking after that-- there was an incredible volume of material among that lot.

Hopefully some people found some good stuff, and from the high bids I saw, it was all crazy cheap.

 

Yes, i was just looking thru the completed and wish I would have paid more attention to it when it was going on. I thought the prices would be more on alot of the stuff but hanson alone had 9 auctions ending that same day plus i think another 9 the next day plus all the other auctions from other companies it is hard to follow them all.

 

A couple points.
1) Squablow was there. A simple message asking for details on a item or two asked he might have time to answer. Most here would help a guy out and that goes for any auction anywhere. I routinely call auction companies for a pic of a item listed without one on a smaller auction and 95% of the time I get that pic.
2) Serious buyers make time to do previews and do pickups. Bet you a beer a lot of the items were bought by buyers living from other states. Not being willing to make a 2 hour drive,each way, for example, to scope out a auction with this many parts is a indication of casual interest not serious intent.
3) The dates of online auctions has to be during the week so the auction company can do live auctions on the weekends. Good auction companies are doing multiple auctions a week during the prime months of the summer.
4) Need to schedule time off? Most auctions are posted with plenty of time to schedule time off. Not knowing about a auction or sale until short notice is not their issue.
Just MHO. Your thoughts and results may vary.

 

Bought a few items..

 

Nice! Some real good stuff there. John had a thing for exhaust manifolds, he'd pull any good ones he found. And I didn't see a single broken fin on any of those drums he had.

The pickup went well. A couple guys are supposed to come tomorrow by special appointment but pretty much everything is cleaned up. I still have to unload my van but I bought an enormous amount, will take me a while to get it all put away.

 

@Squablow First, sorry for your loss.
Second, that looks like it was a lot of hard work for the past year and a half to get it sorted out like that, I commend you and the others for digging in and helping.
Third, I'm glad you are seeing results that make it feel like it was worthwhile, for the family, you and the others who helped and for the parts that live on.