Redstate

And so is the HP DesignJet 750. But even a DesignJet 750 is still a useful machine in certain cirumstances, and so is that poor paper cutter, which I have seen selling for about $2,500 recently.

I can't even tell where the laminator is in the group of pictures, buried underneath all the rest of the junk they made out of those machines.

The 5500PSes are still current production machines. You can buy them new from Hewlett Packard right at this moment.

I was going to bid on that auction when I had just read what was being offered but not after seeing what the machines look like they've been through.

I know I could find the ink and supplies for the Oce and keep it running. The problem is that if it was treated like that poor 5500PS in any way, it's more a parts piece than it will ever be a production printer again.

"If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people He gives it to."

Because to me it looks like those machines are so badly damaged they'll never even be repairable. Who knows how they got that way, but was it necessary? Look over the rest of that website and take a look at the way some of the government surplus machines are treated.

There are people in this country would pay for a functional Hewlett Packard color laser printer from government surplus, if it hadn't been hammered down onto its side on a pallet on a concrete floor, which in all likelihood has rendered it just about useless to anyone except parts scavengers.

I repeat: *what a waste*.

the filing cabinet and desk combinations. Some of the smaller printers seemed to be in ok shape from what I could tell in the pictures. Now, like I said, if only I could put some scratch together, I could fully furnish an office in my basement.

You have to look carefully, but they somehow manage to survive ;).

"This is quite amazing, they have pallets of file cabinets for sale. The bidding starts at $50."

It is not the starting bid in an auction that matters.

...a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right...

---Thomas Paine---

they aren't going all that high. I'm sure a pallet of file cabinets isn't going to go for much more than the $50

Yeah, roughly speaking what happens in a lot of cases is that government offices at all levels have to either spend their entire budgets or face the scalpel. So they spend every dime they have and they don't want to recoup anything from the used equipment:

Otherwise they wouldn't be able to claim that their budgets are too small and they need more money.

So they purchase equipment at the highest prices, use it lightly, and then essentially destroy it so that they cannot recoup anything from it, so that in the next budget cycle they can ask for more money.

This is the way the government works to drain your money away. It's more than a little sick.

And both of the Donks who are running to be our next President know that they'll be very happy to help them nurture that process of government profligacy. The only difference is whose friends will get to spend the money. Sadly, Republicans haven't been much better in recent years, and that's why we're facing the prospect of it getting even worse.

If you have large Pharma near you;

Abbott Labs, right around the corner from me, every spring has their action as well. Everything from pickups, snow blowers , printers, scanners , everything you could possibly imagine that a huge corp uses...

From what I've seen, the prices are very good, and in a lot better shape than I imagine gov equipt would be..

" Got to love the Lord for making things like that."
Morally Compromised

One of the highlights of my job right now is to find good deals on equipment from sources that don't have a vested interest in destroying the equipment before it can be resold.

Occasionally you even find people in government offices in the Heartland who cannot stand to destroy their equipment completely enough that it's unusable. Our Pitney-Bowes 3144 inserter was bought from a local government in Illinois, and even though it sat on the loading dock in the back of their building for about six months, they at least had the decency to put the machine's cover over it and not stack stuff on top of it.

So when we got it back here to Massachusetts, all we really had to do was take it apart carefully and perform some routine maintenance. It works perfectly now, but I have the feeling that's an exception to the rule in government auctions.

Some corporate auctions are better, but on large equipment especially, I can tell anyone to be careful before they bid: ask if you can inspect the lot beforehand. In many cases, once an institution has decided they're going to auction the machine, they leave it basically to the janitors to "uninstall" and remove from the premises, and by the time it travels from where it was installed to where it sits for pickup it's been dropped, banged around, ripped apart, and generally mutilated.

This country wastes an enormous amount of capital equipment. It's one of the primary causes of inflation and budget creep in my mind, because I've watched it happen.

I have a forthcoming post on this, also, a quasi-success story.