Posted on 01/04/2004 6:08:06 AM PST by RJCogburn
The police auction has always been a depressed and homely cousin of the chipper yard sale, a gray Saturday morning in a municipal back lot, grim strangers sifting through boxes full of other people's losses. Do I hear $2 for the boy's mountain bike? Very good, sir. What about $3?
Those days are over in New York City, whose Police Department has joined some 300 others around the country in clearing out crowded property rooms online, unloading hundreds of television sets and car stereo speakers, leather coats and compact discs, cellphones and anything else that once belonged to someone else and is now just taking up space on a locked storeroom shelf.
With the click of a mouse, one man's home invasion nightmare becomes another man's bargain bracelet for the wife. Yesterday's sadness, today's joy.
In late August the New York Police Department signed a contract with the Property Room, a California company that runs the Web site propertyroom.com. The site, which auctions just about every imaginable item that has been seized by the police besides cars, receives some 12 million hits a month, said Tom Lane, a former New York City officer and one of the company's founders.
The Web site lists nearly 200,000 registered bidders, far more than the handful of early risers who used to show up for the Police Department's live auctions at the otherwise deserted — and remarkably hard to find — 1 Police Plaza in Lower Manhattan.
The Property Room keeps half the proceeds from items that sell for less than $1,000 — the vast majority of its inventory — and 25 percent from the sale of more expensive items. Buyers pay for shipping unless they choose to pick up their merchandise from warehouses in Farmingdale, on Long Island, or Los Angeles.
The company says that about 98 percent of everything it posts online sells, far more than at live auctions.
So far, the New York Police Department has received three checks from the company, for a total of about $55,000, police officials said.
Part eBay and part "Cops" episode, the Web site is alternatively cheery ("Hot Pursuit Specials!") and puzzling. How did the police end up with that collectible "I Love Lucy" plate anyway? Where did those eight candlesticks and a Bible come from? Are they really selling that hydroponic grow light — that staple of dorm-room marijuana cultivation? How long before they show up to seize it back?
Daniel Rienzo, a New York landlord, is an enthusiastic bidder. "It's pennies on the dollar," said Mr. Rienzo, 47. "Right now, I'm bidding on another go-cart. My house in the Hamptons has private roads, so I can use go-carts. I want three or four of them."
The origin of the property is unknown to the buyer and the auctioneer. The site lists seized and found items, as well as evidence no longer needed at a trial. Any claimed stolen property has already been returned to its rightful owner; only unclaimed items are for sale. And anyone who can prove ownership of an item shown online gets it back free.
Last year, for example, a musician got out of a taxi in Manhattan that sped off before he could grab his guitar from the trunk. He said he thought it was gone for good until a friend spotted it on the site. Musician and guitar were reunited when he called the company and gave his Social Security number, which was written on the inside of the guitar.
The variety of items on the site is dizzying. A sword and sheath, a scope with a red laser, a tote bag from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. A set of nine pairs of socks, eight cellphones, nine 45-r.p.m. records.
"I always wonder where it came from," said Walid Halabi, a handbag designer who lives on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and who pores over the short descriptions of new items on the site. "I read it and assume the rest of it."
He ticked off the items he has successfully bid on recently: a suitcase, a $50 electric range, a refrigerator with an ice dispenser, a Bell & Howell projector. "It's a beautiful film projector, an old one, for $22," Mr. Halabi said. "Maybe one day I'll find one of these old films and project it."
The Property Room was founded under the name stealitback.com, which still works as a link to the auction site, whose inventory has been given a shot in the arm with the items from New York. "New York is a daily pickup," said Thomas Fegan, the company's vice president. "New York will be huge. They will surpass the rest of the country, easily. The police make out because we clear out their property room. The public makes out because they can bid on this stuff. The taxpayers make out because the money goes back to the area. And we make out."
Inspector Jack Trabitz of the Police Department's property clerk division said the company relieved cramped storerooms, made space for the "never-ending influx of new property" and increased the chances of a sale. "Nobody was going to come from California to my auction to buy three T-shirts," he said.
Mr. Rienzo, the landlord, said he spent about $2,000 a month on the site. "I have kids. I'm buying clothes for kids. It's all brand new," he said. "I buy Levi's at the store, I'll pay $60. I've gotten them there for $15."
The jeans notwithstanding, it is hard to tell how much Mr. Rienzo is really saving, because he is buying things he might not have bought if he had not seen them online. As the saying goes, he could fill a room with the money he is saving, except the room is already filled with stuff he has bought.
"I'm one of their best customers, I believe," Mr. Rienzo said. "I just bought a kayak."
Having done the same thing on EBay myself, I suspect he was worried about another bidder "sniping" him at the last minute and was trying to make his bid high enough to reduce the possibility of that happening.
Hence the "beauty" of the process, at least for the law enforcement agency in question. What retailer WOULDN'T like to sell a product, have it returned to him without having to refund the buyer's money, then put the product right back on the shelf for somebody else to buy?
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