[Milsurplus] Goverment Liquidators
Todd, KA1KAQ
ka1kaq at gmail.com
Tue Apr 26 11:11:23 EDT 2005
I didn't know they had shut it down, but I got out some time ago. I do
recall that they changed their policy which allowed you to write an
item off after a few years to instead making you accountable for it
indefinitely. IIRC, this happened right around the time Plattsburgh
AFB was being closed, because a friend was our local 'screener' and
opted to pass up some nice service monitors and other things because
the accountable price they had on them was scary.
One of the events that took place prior to the change was typical
gov't: he found a number of new Bird wattmeters sitting on top of a
bunch of junk in a large, industrial dumpster. He asked one of the
guys if he could include them in the lot he had already picked up and
the guy shrugged and said 'sure'. When he went came back to collect
them he was stopped by another guy who informed him that if he wanted
those meters, he'd have to bid on the entire 20' dumpster full of
scrap. He set the first meter back inside and left.
He did bring home a large cardboard box full of components, odds and
ends. Chips, knobs, batteries. They still had the property tags on
them, with price. $9 for a typical 'civilian' labelled Energizer 9
volt battery. $100 for a common value resistor, and so on. A rough
pass of this fairly small lot produced a total from the tags of over
$250K for very common stuff. Amazing.
A far cry from when he used to drive down to Mass. back in the 60s
with an 18-wheel flatbed granite truck and load it over the legal
limit with surplus to bring back. Before my time, but I still managed
to end up with a few of the goodies.
~ Todd, KA1KAQ
On 4/26/05, Peter Gottlieb <nerd at verizon.net> wrote:
> Right, as far as I know the surplus program at MARS is completely shut down.
> I tried to get some stuff and was told basically to forget it. And I had a
> real need.
>
> Peter
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "C Whitaker" <whitaker at pa.net>
> To: <milsurplus at mailman.qth.net>
> Sent: Tuesday, April 26, 2005 9:48 AM
> Subject: Re: [Milsurplus] Goverment Liquidators
>
> > de WB2CPN
> >
> > Who are Govt Liquidators? Are they private?
> > As far as I know DRMO only handles DOD stuff.
> > Back when I was visiting DRMO's I know that
> > when some DOD agency needed to sneakily pass
> > equipment to some other agency, via the DRMO
> > was a way to do it. MARS put a stop to their
> > people getting equipment on the spot and
> > messing up the system. Mechanicsburg Navy is
> > a good location for trucks. And, the Navy used
> > to keep their anchors at Salt Lake City. That's
> > mid-continent, you know.
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