Chicago Police Auction

When I was young, my father took my brother and me to an auction held by the Chicago Police to buy our first bicycles. I remember it clearly and have always thought one day I'd go back to one of these just for fun. Well, this past Saturday, my wife and I attended the Chicago Police Auction which is run by Ace Auctioneers.

The merchandise being auctioned off are stolen items or found property that have not been claimed by the rightful owners. Most of these items are bicycles but other items are also available. At this month's auction, we saw items like stereo equipment, several Sony PSP game units (brand new), a Sony PS3 game console, coats, sporting goods, shoes (new), tools, jewelry and snow blowers! How someone steals a snowblower without getting noticed, I'll never know!

The auction starts off with time for the attendees to examine the merchandise. If you want to examine the jewelry, you need to get a number and wait until a seat is vacated at the jewelry table. I would suggest getting there early to do that as those examining the jewelry seem to take quite some time doing so. The other items like the bicycles, tools and smaller items are easily examined.

Right after the end of the inspection period, the auctioneer takes some time to give the attendees a quick idea of how the auction will be run. No "secret" bids are accepted... you need to raise your hand and he has to see it and acknowledge you for it to count. If he doesn't see you, simply yell out to get his attention. Bids only move in $10 increments as well. Don't hope to raise a bid by $1.00!

After all instructions are given, the bicycle auctions go first. Each auction is done by numerical order as each item had been assigned a number which you should write down if you intend to bid on the item. The auctioneer briefly describes the item and then starts the auction.

This past Saturday's auction had about 75 bicycles. I believe the total items being auctioned off was near 300. Most bicycles seemed to sell between $30 to $80. The better bikes went for $100 to $140 and of course the best bikes went for even more. The highest bid for a Gary Fisher bicycle was around $440 I believe.

It was fun to see how excited some of the children were after their parents won the bid for a bike for them. One woman who sat near us was equally excited to win the bid for a fur coat for only $40! Whether it was real fur or not, I'll never know. Once you win the auction, you must go down to the front and immediately pay for your item in cash. You are then given a receipt and can pick up all of your items before you leave.

The jewelry auctions were interesting as it clearly had "regular" bidders who brought the bids into the hundreds of dollars. The auctioneer would simply go back and forth with 2 or 3 bidders and we all we amazed as the starting $10 bid quickly escalated to the hundreds! He even knew these bidders by name and they did not have to immediately go down to pay for them. Apparently, they are "trusted" by the auction and they are able to pay after the auction was completed. The highest bid for one bag of jewelry went for around $1150, but I can't recall the exact amount. Many other bags of jewelry sold for $50 or $60, so obviously, these bags did not have the best jewelry.

My wife and I had a good time talking with an African-American gentleman who sat in front of us. He would bid on some jewelry and then after he would win the bid, he'd go down, pay for it and bring it back for us to look at. It was obvious that he did not look at the items in advance, so he was taking a chance that his purchases would be good. Many of the items in the bags he had won in the $50 range didn't look too good to me. But he'd keep asking me if I thought the diamonds were real or that the gold was real. I'd just smile and say, "I don't know." Really, it didn't look too good to me.

He was funny though. As he would turn around to talk to us, he'd hear the bidding happen and try to bid at the last moment, only to lose the bid to someone else. I told him he'd better pay attention if he wanted to bid, but he didn't seem to care. He was having too good a time! On one bid, he moved the item to $60 and hesitated and lost it to someone for $70. His comment after that was, "I chickened out." He was hilarious!

We stayed for about 4 hours at the auction, but did not bid on anything. We were not really there to buy anything, but we just wanted something to do. We had a good time just watching the action going on.

I plan to attend another auction in the future. Now that I have a better idea of how the auction works, I'll try bidding on some items if I find something nice. It seems the auction is held every other month. While bicycles dominate the auction and you have to wait until all bikes are auctioned off before any other item is offered, you can simply go early to look over the merchandise, leave and then return later in the day to participate in the other auctions. For the 75 bikes to be auctioned off, it took about 2 hours. You can use that as a basic gauge about how long it could take. The auctioneer takes more time auctioning off the bikes, but moves a lot faster on the other items.

Check out The Chicago Police Auction if you get a chance. Be prepared to spend at least 4 or 5 hours there if you want to bid on items other than bicycles.

Image borrowed from the internet.