Chattanooga selling surplus online
Published May 9th, 2006
Last fall, the city joined T-V-A, U-T, the State of Tennessee, and others in selling government surplus on-line.
Artie Prichard: “we know we have a bigger audience, and we have people that are interested in a particular item like traffic controllers, we’ve gone from getting $1 a piece at public auctions..to $25 – $30 a piece.”
Chattanooga employs Etowah-based “NuMarkets,” an eBay middle man.
Once declared surplus, NuMarkets picks up the items and brings them here.
Take for example, this Motorola Centracom LED front panel — a hard to describe communications device.
The company tags the surplus for record keeping, and then researches the item to create a detailed item description before listing on eBay.
Sherry Rogers: “you know exactly what you’re buying when you buy something from our site.”
“Once on-line – we, the public, have a chance to buy what our tax dollars originally purchased. The fastest way to find local surplus items? Go to numarkets.com.”
Scroll down, click on Chattanooga for location, and then look under the “business and Industrial” category.
Sherry Rogers: “the items are always different, we never know what we’re going to get.”
Numarkets takes a 15 to 40-percent commission depending on what the item sells for. But when items sell for 10 and 20 times what they would at a public auction, the city still makes more money.
Artie Prichard: “all money goes back into the general fund, except the police department stuff and that goes into the pension for fire and policemen.”
