M9 Phrobis US Government Surplus Sale

[pancanal]

Plenty of Phrobis M9 Bayonets being surplused at the Government Liquidation web site. Auction ends tomorrow at 5 PM est. WWW.govliquidation.com seach "bayonet". Over 100s being auctioned off. Good luck bidders.

[pancanal]

I counted over 450 M9 Phrobis bayonets being sold....that's a lot pf M9s. They look pretty good in the pictures.

[pancanal]

I guess there will be a flood of M9 Phrobis on Ebay in the near future. It looks like most of them sold for about $60.00 to $70.00. There could be some nice stuff in this batch.

[porterkids]

I took a quick look at them the other day. It appears that they used the same photo for all of the auctions. It was clearly a Phrobis M9, but the item description said they were Phrobis or LanCay. Prices were good for Phrobis and early Lancays, but if there are a large number of later Lan-Cay bayonets I could see someone getting stuck. $60-70 would be the most (or more than) I'd spend for a used Lan-Cay.

It will be interesting to see what was included in the groups. Maybe we'll see another run of chevrons, or shallow fuller LanCays!

[porterkids]

Is it possible to search completed auctions on that site?

[pancanal]

Bill, I tried to find a way to see the end results, but could not. No such luck. Sure would have been interesting to see.

[porterkids]

I was talking with a friend of mine who at times participates in these government auctions. I mentioned to him that there's a possibility to make a real killing if these auctions close at $60-70 a piece for the bayonets. He pointed out a few things that I didn't consider and I thought I'd share them here so people don't think that the guys buying and selling from these auctions are screwing the collectors:
1.) Sales tax, sometimes as high as 9.5% gets added to the sale
2.) Most of the auctions have a buyers premium, usually 10%
3.) Packaging and shipping costs
4.) There is always about 10% of the lot that is broken or junk, unsuitable for resale
5.) It's the luck of the draw as to what you receive. Could be Phrobis, LanCay, Lan-Cay or Ontario, or even a number of M7s mixed in with the M9s.

So by the time the winning bidder has the bayonets in his possession they are at a base price of somewhere around $100. Then they all have to be cleaned up and either put on ebay (with costs to post and to sell) or lugged around to shows. So in the long run it looks to me like you can make somewhere around $20-30 on a bayonet if you're lucky and place no $$ value on your time.

[pwcosol]

Several years ago, I used to attend some of the DRMO open auctions or cash sale events. At that time, I was purchasing primarily Lista or Vidmar industrial storage cabinets and sometimes things like scrap tools. This was before the government privatized the liquidation of most surplus merchandise. The concept was to take several military installations in a geographical region and allow private business to bid on a contract to handle the disposition of surplus material for these facilities. This was limited to (initially) 300 FSN classifications determined by the government, but nearly everything is now disposed of via this method.

The goal was to reduce the number of Federal employees working @ the various DRMOs, letting the contractor do most of the work, and provide a reasonable return to the U.S. Treasury. The contractor was given much latitude as to how best to dispose of the surplus property; via auction, internet sales, cash sales, etc. The down side is it has pretty much eliminated the thousands of private individuals whom used to make a living buying surplus from the government auctions, squelching competitive bidding. The task to handle the contracts led to the two largest companies interested in this work merging, and resulted in them alone being the successful bidders on virtually all the contracts let by the Feds.
The up side is it has turned out to be a major success and benefit to the Government, exceeding their expectations.

One used to be able to inspect merchandise offered for auction. However, after 9-1-01, security at most facilities increased and it became more of a problem to gain access to many bases. The contract company now offers a variety of methods to allow individuals to obtain & have their merchandise shipped, without the bidder ever having to set foot on prem to get it. I think there are also people whom have access and will, for a fee, personally inspect what you are interested in bidding on, and provide a better, more accurate description. From what I have seen at previous auctions, I would be most hesitant to bid on anything sight-unseen!