It is not the stuff you buy and sell that is the headache as it is the people you have to deal with in the business. A lot of people do not understand what government surplus is.
It is simply stuff the government (or other organization) has that is considered in excess to their needs.
Part of this is probably from the age-old rumor that you used to be able to get an unissued Jeep for fifty bucks. While I am pretty sure someone somewhere along the line got an unissued Jeep from Uncle Sam for fifty clams, I would bet that the majority of the so-called fifty dollar Jeeps had probably been run hard and put away wet. They had been used and a lot of them had been either used hard or had been in accidents. Very few of them were actually pristine.
Over the past couple of years I have bought a couple of surplus items that were unisssued. They had spent their service careers in a warehouse somewhere until it was declared surplus and sold off to the public. The laptop I am writing this on is one of the two items. When I got it there was not a scratch on it.
Of course, the hard drive had been replaced, but other than that it was as it was the day Uncle Sam paid for it. I was lucky to find it and I paid quite a premium for it's bieing in unissued condition.
The other item I bought was an unissued radio that showed up with a few scratches on it from being moved around in a government warehouse. I paid a premium for that one, too. I expected to pay extra for these two items because of their condition.
The problem with things begins with the expectations of people that are not familiar with or do not understand surplus as such. The items range in condition from pristine to out and out scrap. Even unissued surplus stuff is likely to have a few scratches and a ding or two in it from being shuffled around in a warehouse or supply depot. Pristine is very rare.
Some of the items are reconditioned and reconditioning an item is not a hard and fast process. It can range from a total rebuild putting the item in question to brand new specifications down to simply slapping a coat of OD spray paint on it. It depends on the item and the level of reconditioning ordered for the item.
I have a reconditioned and tested radio set at home that works like a champ. The first time I tried it out I punched straight through to Port Charlotte, Florida with it, a distance of about a thousand miles. There is a fresh coat of paint on it and I suppose a couple of technicians went over it pretty carefully as it works like a champ.
Now there is another catagory that fits into the picture and that is the catagory 'serviceable'. It means that the item in question works like it is supposed to. It says absolutely nothing whatsoever about the cosmetic condition of the item. Cosmetic condition can range from brand new to pretty damned scarred up and battered. It can look like hell, but it still works up to specifications.
A serviceable item can have all sorts of things beaten up on it and even have damage to it other than scuffed paint. All that can be said about it is that it works. It is in the condition that it can be issued to some soldier or sailor to use and it will work as designed.
GIs are pretty hard on things, especially during combat or combat training and things get tossed around a bit. A radio or laptop is apt to be tossed into a vehicle a bit carelessly when the unit gets into a hurry to get somewhere fast and things do get banged up a bit. Then again, a lot of MilSpec gear is made for this.
It is one of the things I like about MilSpec gear. The stuff is generally pretty physically tough. This laptop is one of them. It takes a licking and keeps on ticking. I have had one just like it fall off of the galley table a couple of times and suffered no ill effects, while my shipmate destroyed his the first time it hit the deck.
The first laptop, the one that hit the deck, arrived in my posession pretty beat up looking and I reconditioned the outside of it with a coat of Krylon paint. The inside had supposidly been checked out and it works flawlessly to this day.
Anyway, the problem with being a surplus dealer is that there are an awful lot of people that do not understand these things. They do not understand cosmetics.
My first surplus project took place during the Johnson administration. I wanted a radio to monitor local police and fire calls but they were pretty expensive for a kid. The guy next door was a wizard with military electronics and told me where I could buy a BC-603 tank set and we could cut the coils down to get the set into frequency range. He could also build a power supply for it, too for short money. The government dynamotors used to power the set were hard to come by and expensive.
I ordered a servicable set form Fair Radio in Lima, Ohio and while it was coming I combed the local dump for a few parts to build the power supply with.
When it arrived, it looked pretty sad. My father took one look at it and sadly told me that it looked like I had been rooked. I took it next door and sadly told Dick what my father had said. He grinned.
"We'll see, he said and we hooked it up to his power supply and it worked like a charm.
This was not a bad deal, it worked. Still, it looked pretty rough.
We pulled the set apart, cut the coils and re aligned the set and I was good to go, but there was one more thing.
While I had the case and the front of the set off, Dick handed me a piece of fine sandpaper and showed me now to feather all of the nicks and scratches. It took a while, but I got it done.
Dick took a rattle can of OD spray paint and repainted everything but the face panel and when I took it home my father had a hard time believing it was the same radio he had seen a few days earlier. It looked brand new.
Some time later the father of another friend bought a surplus piece of test equipment and was appalled at the cosmetic shape. He looked at it pretty dubiously and told me he was going to return it. I suggested he try it out and told him that I'd bet a coat of Navy gray paint would probably work wonders. He looked at me and scowled.
He did try it out and it worked like it was supposed to and then he repainted it and I believe he had that unit for several years. He shook his head when he finished reconditioning it and told my dad about it. Dad chuckled and told him about my set. The man was amazed that just a coat of paint could hide so much.
One of the reasons I was happy is that I did not expect a brand new set for $6.95 and had been warned that the set would most likely arrive pretty battered looking, but that Fair Radio was pretty good about giving things a test before they shipped then out.
My expectations were not all that high. I had expected the set to look beat up after Dick had explained to me that it had probably been pulled out of a Sherman tank and had been used by GIs for a while. My expectations were also realistic in that I knew Fair would have gone over these sets to make sure they were basically up to snuff and worked.
In short I knew what I was gettting into and when you consider that back in the early to mid 60s a VHF communications receiver ran about what the average Joe made in a week I wound up with a pretty good deal simply by adding a little sweat equity.
While surplus deals like that are pretty common, the problem dealers have is that an awful lot of the general public has no clue about what they are getting into. A lot of people expect too much.They have heard the stories of getting a brand new whatever for a couple of bucks and tend to expect a lot more than they wind up with. They think that scrap prices will get them something totally unissued.
No matter how accurate the dealer explains the condition of the item, there are a lot of people that don't stop and listen and think. They already expect an unissued item is going to show up just for them. It is a picture in their head and no amount of explaining to them what kind of condition an item is in will change the picture they have in their mind. They simply set themselves up for disappointment.
A dealer can say that an item has spent the last six decades underwater and was salvaged off of a torpedoed Liberty ship and there are stll an awful lot of people that expect the item to show up with a coupe of small water stains.
While getting something unissued for cheap does happen every so often, it really doesn't happen as often at the buyer wants to believe. In his mind he pictures a brand new whatever showing up at his door and is terribly disappointed when the purchased item looks like hell.
The reason I would not want to go into the surplus business is because I'd bet you spend an awful lot of time dealing with disappointed and angry people.
my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/
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