University surplus auctions

[senjoronie]

Has anyone ever gone to a university surplus auction? If you have, then you know that one can often find a lot of equipment that is useful to the home experimenter, often at very low prices. A search of the Forum turned up some references to these auctions, but there were no threads devoted to the topic specifically.

The school near me has a large and diverse science department and a good engineering school besides. These departments get a lot of funding and regularly replace their equipment, which the university disposes of via auction.

Just this weekend, I picked up a Welch Duo-seal vacuum pump for US$40. It works well, pulls 29.75" of vacuum according to the included gauge. At a previous auction I bought a KNF Laboport for about the same price and have had no problems with it either. Other items sold at the auction included a large 1500xg centrifuge, a vacuum oven, several large air compressors, generators, motors, a wide assortment of lab glassware, an old EKG unit, spectrometers, oscilloscopes, various temperature/pressure/etc. gauges, and various heavy-duty power tools.

I recommend to anyone interested in rogue/home science to go check out a university auction. Some of the equipment will be old and worn out but surprisingly, a lot of it was very servicible and/or in decent shape. The prices are frequently low, almost always under 50 dollars. The aforementioned EKG sold for $10, and the weirder pieces (things that farmers/agricultural people couldn't use or figure out) went for less. A good day was had, overall.

[megalomania]

I love and hate these university lab auctions. I have to restrain myself because I want to spend every penny I have on stuff I will never use :) How can I not spend $50 on a machine that was once $50,000 even if it is broken and will cost twice that much to fix!

If you actually need something these are wonderful sources of cheap goods. To really make a score you often have to bring a few thousand dollars to buy a lot (lot meaning a large amount of materials being sold all at once for the same bid). Professional lab equipment resellers will plink down a few grand to buy an 80 case lot of used glassware and sell it for 10 times that piece by piece. You could set up an entire lab in a single purchase with that much glassware, something that would cost tens of thousands of dollars new. I have yet to justify spending that much up front for labware, but it is quite cheap in the long run.