By Jared Hinderer
My phone’s alarm rings at 6:30 a.m. on Saturday, Dec. 15, and oddly enough, I am wide awake. I quickly get ready as my friend’s black Saab rolls into the driveway and my dad finishes getting ready to go. Around 7:00 we all load up in my car to go meet my uncle at Waffle House for breakfast. As I turn the key and my V6 roars to life, I think to myself, “This will be awesome; my first auto auction.”
But, first, let me back up about a week. I was shopping in Louisville when I came across an advertisement for a Goodwill auto auction. This piqued my interest so I went to a worker at Goodwill and asked for a list of cars if they had one. The clerk told me I would have to go online, so as soon as I got home (their site didn’t like working on my iPhone) I went to the site to if they had anything interesting.
As I scrolled through the myriad beat-up Mercurys, Hondas, Chryslers, and Fords, I found it: a beautiful 1997 BMW 528i. That’s more my style. Since my two friends that I detail cars with and I are looking for a car to be our “company car” I called them up to see if they wanted to try to get it. They both agreed and we set a price and if it looked as good did in the pictures, we would buy it.
When I got to the auction lot, the BMW looked great from the gates, and there was nobody there, so I was optimistic. I went in and started taking a look at the car I hoped to bring home that day. Let me be the first to tell you: don’t trust one picture online. As I did my inspection I tallied up about $4000 in hail damage, totally bald rear tires (someone had some fun before they donated it), there was a failed rear window regulator that was letting the interior get soaked, and I regret even opening the door. The interior had the same aroma one might find in the everglades in Florida. Oh, and to top it all off a worker at the auction told me it had “strange electrical problems that makes the alarm go off all the time.”
A little dismayed, I started looking at other cars as it began raining and even more people started showing up. At this point, my uncle who hates rain (on top of the fact that his All-Star Breakfast from Waffle House that wasn’t settling well with him) quickly retreated to his Escalade and went home, leaving me his debit card and the instructions to go no more than $850 on a 1979 Ford F150 he wanted.
I continued looking with my friend and finally found what we really wanted: a 1991 Mercedes-Benz 300SE with 181,000 miles. This car was beautiful. The paint was good, the tires were good, the interior was relatively clean and to top it all off, they said it ran and drove. I was pumped; this is the car we really wanted. I called my other friend that was going in on it with us and asked if he wanted to go for it. He gave the go ahead.
By the time the auction started, the little showers of rain had turned into a complete downpour, but that didn’t seem to bother anybody. When the auction began I knew it was going to be awhile before we got to the truck or the Mercedes (lot number 60 of 67, so it was nearly last) I wanted to bid on, and I contemplated taking a seat in a 2002 Ford minivan to get out of the weather, but decided to stay outside and watch the proceeding.
When the first six cars would not start and were bought by scrappers for a little over $500 each, the hopes of me getting a running and driving Mercedes looked slim. After a wrecked PT Cruiser sold for $3600, two Camrys with over 300,000 miles brought about $2000 each, and a van with a bad rod knock went for somewhere around $2000, along with about 35 other cars I didn’t pay any attention to, we got to the BMW, the original car we went there for. The auction workers finally got its 266,000 mile motor to start while the alarm siren was wailing. Expecting this very poor condition car to bring $700 at the most, I was shocked when the auctioneer yelled “SOLD” at a price of $1600.
After a few more cars, we came to the truck my uncle wanted. I thought, “This is it, my time to shine.” I worked my way up through the crowd to get next to the auctioneer. The bid started at $500 but before I could even yell out “600!” it was already there, so I franticly throughout a “750!” followed by an “800!” then “850!” each time my bid was immediately beat by someone else. That truck went for $2200.
Finally we got to the Mercedes. I could already tell by the way they looked the car over; some Russian men were going to be my main opponents. The Mercedes fired up at the turn of the key (well, once they put it in neutral, since the neutral safety switch was shot) and the bidding started out at $500 again. The bids quickly shot well past my spending limit and I was only able to get in a $600 bid. At each increment the auctioneer would look at me, waiting for a nod of the head to signify a bid, which I desperately wanted to give him, but I didn’t have the money to back it up. The car sold for an absolute steal to the three Russian men for $1500. We were defeated. We left the lot threw our soaked jackets and umbrellas in the trunk of my Saab and went home with the same number of cars we had when we left.
There are a couple morals to this story. 1. Scrap values are much higher than I thought they were and 2. Don’t let your first time doing something keep you from doing it again. I had a blast getting up at 6:30 on a Saturday to eat at Waffle House and stand in the rain around some crappy cars for three hours, and I plan on going back; just with more money next time. But, alas, like an old fishing tale, that Mercedes will always be “the one that got away” to me.