Get Your Bids in to the AOL Reston Asset Auction

The liquidation auction of the former assets of the AOL Reston offices that I mentioned last week started at 10am and is going on right now.

All the kitchen & cafeteria stuff is sold, but you still have a little time to get at some of the office fixtures if you like.

I'm not going to be bidding on anything -- the few things I was looking priced out of my range quickly. Though I did go to the preview yesterday to take a look, and got a few pictures -- here's the set: AOL Reston Asset Auction Preview, 1/22/08.

I'd only been to the Reston building once or twice, so I didn't really know it. The guy who let us in said that over 100 people had been by looking over stuff, and sources inside AOL say that lots of folks (who used to work in that office) were following online. (Though looking over the sold items now, the same high bidders keep popping up -- most likely not interested individuals, but probably resellers, or property owners.)

The photos of the fixtures aren't much different from in the catalog, so I was mostly just looking for remnants of the AOL presence:

Empty Infrastructure Services cubicle.

Empty Mail Ops Bulletin board -- bid on it here (ends 12:15pm).

Personal Information Data Systems whiteboard. Didn't see it on the auction list.

Turnstile. Not for sale, I just thought the LEDs looked cool.

So that's about it.

Tags: aol reston, rasmus auctioneers

AOL Goes on the Auction Block

Rasmus Auctioneers does asset liquidations when companies move or go bankrupt. I check out their site pretty regularly, though I've never bid in one of their auctions.

This time, however, I may need to make an exception:

URGENT SHORT NOTICE! Inspect Tuesday! Former AOL Offices - 3 Day Auction
Internet Only Auction Bidding Starts Closing 10 AM Wednesday January 23rd.

AOL closed its Reston office and data center a few months ago, so they're liquidating some of the office furniture and cafeteria fixtures:

"URGENT! Super short notice liquidation of 120 offices. Former AOL Reston offices. Designer offices, admin offices, executive seating, modular workstations, conference rooms, break rooms.... Online Monday."

"URGENT! Super short notice liquidation of complete corporate cafeteria. Former AOL building. Super high end equipment. Full compliment of equipment. SHORT NOTICE opportunity!"

A sad-looking cubicle.

Even though Rasmus says they "conducted the majority of dot com liquidations resulting from the “Dot Bomb” in the mid-Atlantic region," I'm not going to draw any larger inferences from this.

Since they're basically down the street from me, I will take a look and see if I can score a chair or something.

Tags: aol reston, online auctions, rasmus auctioneers

Wanna Buy a Dump Truck, Cheap?

As I occasionally do, I was looking over the list of local auctions at R. L. Rasmus Auctioneers.

While there was no DC strip club license up for grabs this time around, there is a bankruptcy liquidation auction for an asphalt construction company, which features:

A John Deere backhoe (current bid, $14,250):

A few different dump trucks, including this 10-footer, a steal at its current, buy-me-and-pimp-me-up bid price of $2,150:

Imagine the faces of all those Hummer H2 wussies when you roll up in one of these babies.

An asphault roller for only $175 (a great toy idea for the construction-minded kid in your life -- forget this "Bob the Builder" plastic crap):

Good for driveways and car-crushing (Mini Coopers only)

And a bunch of other stuff.

Tags: construction equipment, rl rasmus

Anyone Want to Go Halfsies on a DC Strip Club License?

Around the time of the (first) dotcom bubble implosion, I started checking out the site of R.L. Rasmus Auctioneers (they do business liquidation-type auctions) in case I could hoover up a cheap Aeron chair, random hardware, or other symbols of burn-rate excess for pennies on the dollar.

I still haven't got anything from them, but I saw this listing yesterday: Nude Dancing License - District of Columbia.

The auction is next Tuesday. Deposit required: Only $10,000.

Back in November, the DC City Paper had an article of the state of DC strip clubs and how they're being affected by gentrification, development, and the new baseball stadium.

I guess the strip club licenses are like NYC taxi medallions or something.

I think this calls for extensive online research, plus on-site competitive analysis fieldwork.

Tags: dc strip clubs