Surely, there's someone out there who needs six factory-sealed, 45kg cans of freon. Officials at Penn State University in the US just hope that someone is on eBay.
Last year, the university's salvage and surplus department raised more than US$90,000 selling used or unneeded equipment on eBay. As colleges and universities absorb budget cuts, some are turning to the online auction site to get rid of their more unusual, hard-to-price pieces.
"More and more, we're seeing that we're getting more money through eBay than we are through our traditional methods," said Jim Dunlop, director of procurement services for Penn State.
Salvage and surplus operations have long been a part of college life, especially at big public universities. Dorm furniture, lab equipment, even office artwork needs to be replaced eventually, and university surplus warehouses end up looking like the set of Sanford and Son where there's one of everything and always a deal to be made.
But traditional means of dump-ing unwanted items -- campus surplus stores and live auctions -- only go so far. After all, once Penn State Public Broadcasting is done with it, who in Pennsylvania needs a 15-section radio tower?
"We were having live auctions here once a month, and we were flooding the market in our area for what we had available," said Patsy Hendricks, surplus property supervisor at Oregon State University. "We sold palates of glassware, scientific glassware, for US$10 or US$15. We knew there was a better way to do this."
Oregon State was a pioneer in using Internet auction sites to sell some of the university's -- and the state's -- more unusual items. Hendricks said she first started using Amazon.com's auction site in the late 1990s, switching to eBay about four years ago.
The idea is catching on. It was after a visit to Oregon State that Penn State first began using eBay, said Will Gallaher, manager of Penn State Salvage and Surplus.
Michigan State and Washington State universities sell on eBay; the University of Washington, in addition to using eBay, has Webcast its live auctions, allowing people to participate from around the world.
A Hammond organ here, an ice cream machine there and various and sundry nuts, bolts and gauges generated a decent revenue stream for Penn State. But it was a globe with a wooden stand sold in September 2001 that convinced Gallaher and Pam Coffman, who handles the university's eBay sales, that eBay was for real.
"Years ago, we'd sell one for US$300, US$400, US$500, and people usually throw the globe away and put in a piece of glass or something and make a nice table out of it," Gallaher said.
Not this time. A museum in the Netherlands paid US$11,600 for the globe, then paid movers to pack it up and ship it overseas.
Since then, Penn State has sold three pianos, a Moog synthesizer, a doughnut machine, an ion synthesizer and other assorted oddities on eBay.
Sometimes, they barely know what they're selling -- they only know someone could use it. A tilting chair recovered from Penn State's Milton S. Hershey College of Medicine is described on eBay as "great for a tattoo artist or doctor."
But for all its successes, eBay isn't for every college.
Mark Ludwig, manager if Iowa State University Surplus, said he doesn't have the personnel to photograph and describe every item for an eBay sale, and that he doesn't have the space to store things while the auction takes place.
A bigger problem for many state universities are laws regulating the disbursement of state property or limiting contracts the state can enter into.
The CIA has a message for Chinese government officials worried about their place in Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) government: Come work with us. The agency released two Mandarin-language videos on social media on Thursday inviting disgruntled officials to contact the CIA. The recruitment videos posted on YouTube and X racked up more than 5 million views combined in their first day. The outreach comes as CIA Director John Ratcliffe has vowed to boost the agency’s use of intelligence from human sources and its focus on China, which has recently targeted US officials with its own espionage operations. The videos are “aimed at
STEADFAST FRIEND: The bills encourage increased Taiwan-US engagement and address China’s distortion of UN Resolution 2758 to isolate Taiwan internationally The Presidential Office yesterday thanked the US House of Representatives for unanimously passing two Taiwan-related bills highlighting its solid support for Taiwan’s democracy and global participation, and for deepening bilateral relations. One of the bills, the Taiwan Assurance Implementation Act, requires the US Department of State to periodically review its guidelines for engagement with Taiwan, and report to the US Congress on the guidelines and plans to lift self-imposed limitations on US-Taiwan engagement. The other bill is the Taiwan International Solidarity Act, which clarifies that UN Resolution 2758 does not address the issue of the representation of Taiwan or its people in
US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo on Friday expressed concern over the rate at which China is diversifying its military exercises, the Financial Times (FT) reported on Saturday. “The rates of change on the depth and breadth of their exercises is the one non-linear effect that I’ve seen in the last year that wakes me up at night or keeps me up at night,” Paparo was quoted by FT as saying while attending the annual Sedona Forum at the McCain Institute in Arizona. Paparo also expressed concern over the speed with which China was expanding its military. While the US
SHIFT: Taiwan’s better-than-expected first-quarter GDP and signs of weakness in the US have driven global capital back to emerging markets, the central bank head said The central bank yesterday blamed market speculation for the steep rise in the local currency, and urged exporters and financial institutions to stay calm and stop panic sell-offs to avoid hurting their own profitability. The nation’s top monetary policymaker said that it would step in, if necessary, to maintain order and stability in the foreign exchange market. The remarks came as the NT dollar yesterday closed up NT$0.919 to NT$30.145 against the US dollar in Taipei trading, after rising as high as NT$29.59 in intraday trading. The local currency has surged 5.85 percent against the greenback over the past two sessions, central
RSS