Consignment, an auction, a listing site, or scrap.

Against an auction

An auction sets a date and the room decides. That is its strength and its cost. On the day, the price is whatever the people who showed up are willing to pay, and if the right 2 buyers for your machine are in the middle of a shutdown that week, they are not in the room.

Consignment has no auction day. The machine is marketed until the right buyer appears, which is usually somebody who needs that exact width, that exact capacity, that exact control system. That buyer is not hunting a bargain, they are solving a problem, and they price it accordingly.

An auction is the better answer when the whole floor must be empty by a fixed date, when there are hundreds of mixed lots rather than a few good machines, or when a court or a lender is driving the timetable. We say so when that is what we see.

Against a listing site

Listing sites sell you exposure and then leave. You write the description, you take the photographs, you answer the questions, you host the viewings, you deal with the buyer who wants to send a rigger next Tuesday and then goes quiet, and the machine stays on your floor the whole time.

Consignment with us moves the machine off your floor and moves the work onto us: our photographs, our write-up, our catalog, our buyer network, one point of contact from the first email to the payment.

A listing site is the better answer when you have the time, the staff and the appetite to run the sale yourself and you want to keep the whole proceeds.

Against scrapping it

Scrap pays for weight. A working machine sold to a user is worth what the work it does is worth. The gap is largest exactly where sellers assume it is smallest, which is older, heavier, mechanically sound equipment in industries where new machines are expensive and lead times are long.

Scrap is the better answer when the machine is genuinely obsolete, incomplete beyond repair, or so specialized that no second user exists. We will tell you when we think that is the case, before you ship anything.

Against leaving it where it is

Doing nothing is the most common alternative and the most expensive. Idle machines take floor space, insurance, and the slow damage of being cannibalized for parts and rained on after somebody moves them outside temporarily. Every month a machine sits, the market for it gets a little older, and the people who knew how to run it leave.

The 4 questions that decide it

1. Is there an immovable date, and how close is it? If the building has to be empty inside 60 days, you are choosing between an auction and scrap for the bulk of it, and possibly consignment for the few machines worth the freight.
2. Is the value concentrated or spread? A handful of good machines plus a lot of general plant equipment usually means 2 routes, not 1. Consign the good machines, auction or scrap the rest. Most closures end up doing exactly this, and it is the right answer.
3. How much of your team's time is this worth? Running the sale yourself keeps the whole proceeds and costs more hours than anybody estimates. Consignment costs a commission and almost no hours.
4. Does a second user exist? If yes, scrap is throwing money away. If genuinely no, scrap is the honest answer and nobody should pretend otherwise.

What we bring that the alternatives do not

• A catalog of roughly 97,000 machines that buyers already search, across 18 industries.
• A buyer network built since 1975, with buyers worldwide, many of them repeat.
• Our own warehouse in Roebuck, South Carolina, so the machine is somewhere real and indoors, on the ground and near a dock, where it can be photographed properly and collected easily.
• Professional photography and a written specification, done by people who know what a buyer looks at.
• One point of contact, from the first email to the payment.

For a dealer

You do not need consignment explained. What you need to know is reach and terms. The reach is 18 industries, a catalog buyers search, and a network built over decades, with buyers worldwide, many of them repeat. The terms are agreed in writing before the machine ships, and we tell you quickly whether the machine is one we can move.

A machine sitting in your yard outside your own market is the clearest consignment case there is. It is complete, it is documented, and somebody who already knows the trade is handing it to somebody with a different set of buyers.