Specialist Auction Tips

Here’s a list of some departments that conduct auctions.

U.S. Customs Service

The USCS is responsible to enforce legislation regarding levying duty and taxes on property coming from other parts of the world & impose rules regarding allowable property. As you can imagine, not every bit of property at the US border actually makes its way into the country. In fact a large amount doesn’t. What you will find is big Customs Warehouses with inadmissible and abandoned cars that will be sold at auctions.

Without getting too technical on Import Tax laws, here are a few reasons why these vehicles end up in government warehouses:

1. The cars may exceed the maximum quantity allowed per person at any time.

2. The cars are just plainly abandoned. Perhaps the individual or company importing the property wasn’t aware that tax had to be paid, or didn’t have the cash to pay

3. A range of other miscellaneous reasons.

You can think for yourself that all of these things amount to quite a hefty inventory list of goods. It’s not uncommon therefore to find cars of all sorts, makes and models at these car auctions.

A Helpful Hint

A tip to be in the lookout for: Sometimes these items have to be shipped out of the US after a certain period of time, e.g. 30, 60 or 90 days. This has got to do with the fact that the property never had the right to be on US soil in the first place. This will normally be indicated in the auction catalogue, but ask if you are not sure. Unless you have a place outside the US, you will have all sorts of problems as you won’t be able to keep the items purchased.

Where do they occur?

These auctions tend to occur in the Border States such as California, Arizona, Texas as well as Florida and New Jersey. Regardless of where you are situated, they are worthwhile following as they only occur roughly once a month.

So who else seizes, confiscates and takes away?

Another great place to look for government seized car auctions are the U.S. Marshall Service.

They are effectively the agency that manages the disposal of the property seized by quite a few federal government agencies. This is goods and property normally related to criminal activities.

The goods become the property of the department of justice and the U.S. Marshall Office is the group that are responsible for auctioning it off.

The agencies involved are the FBI, DEA as well as the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

How do US Marshall office operate?

The U.S. Marshall office often makes use of outside vendors to conduct the auctions, but it depends entirely on the different districts.

The frequency is also a factor that depends on the district, the amount of cars for sale, etc. What you will also tend to find is that in the same districts there may be different contracted auctioneers involved with different asset types, e.g. Motor Vehicles, Personal Property, Boats, etc.

The second part of this article will be continued under seized car auctions.

CarAuctionInc.com database