Auctioneers Drowning in Liquidating Dotcoms

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Auctioneers drowning in liquidating dotcoms by Tom Kirchofer Monday, May 28, 2001

With more than 100 people milling about the breezy downtown Boston offices of another dead dotcom, Michael Saperstein has to be part entertainer, part enforcer.

As the auctioneer charged with liquidating the physical remnants of defunct online lending company PrimeStreet.com Inc., which went under in February, Saperstein wanted to get through last week's auction with a minimum of hassles.

``It's going to get hot and sweaty in this room,'' he warned the crowd - many of whom lounged on PrimeStreet's high-end office chairs - as he climbed onto a stepladder and went through a series of ``what-you-see-is-what-you-get'' disclaimers.

And then he launched into his auctioneer's badinage, starting the bidding with lots of miscellaneous office supplies, some shelves and a microwave oven.

``I've got $20 from the sarcastic woman's friend!'' he shouted at one point as he started to plow through the 270-lot auction.

While these are starving times for people trying to do business on the Internet, especially the much maligned ``dotcommers,'' auctioneers who liquidate bankrupt businesses say they're as busy as ever.

``It's been a tidal wave of dotcom and Internet-related companies and the equipment they use. It's been relentless, and it shows no sign of slowing,'' said Saperstein, who works for his father's firm, Paul E. Saperstein Co. Inc. ``The only other time in the last 10 years that it was this busy was when we went through the real estate phase (in the early 1990s) where we were doing, on some weeks, dozens and dozens of auctions.''

It's tough to compute how many dotcoms have gone on the auction block, said Michelle Hopkins, a spokeswoman for the National Auctioneers Association, though she said it's clear the dotcoms are bringing lots of new business to auctioneers.

``It's so new that we don't have it as one of our auction categories,'' she said. ``But I do know that for some of our more technologically savvy auctioneers, they're finding this to be a good source of business.''

Saperstein, who works for one of Boston's premier auction firms, said he's handled about 18 high-tech flameouts this year. ``And without naming any names, we've got another, realistically, dozen on the back burner awaiting auction.''

Saperstein has liquidated a who's who of Bay State high tech flops. Among them: Internet infrastructure maker Ironbridge Networks Inc., high-speed Internet provider Digital Broadband Communications Inc. and online retailers Shoplink.com, Streamline.com and Furniture.com.

Auctioning the tools used by failed dotcoms has become a booming business in other areas, too.

Chris Rasmus, an Alexandria, Va., auctioneer, said he's handled more than 35 dotcom auctions so far this year. In a few weeks he'll be in Boston to liquidate HealthQuick.com's unsold inventory, warehoused in Charlestown.

HealthQuick was a Virginia company that that sold health and beauty products. He's already sold off the contents of the company's offices.

Rasmus says dotcom auctions often feature high-end computer equipment and furniture, bought when the businesses were flush with cash. And given the sector's rapid deterioration, the stuff is often lightly used.

But in Charlestown, Rasmus will be dealing with the remnants of HealthQuick.com's merchandise inventory.

``We've got 27 tractor-trailer loads of vitamins, batteries, hair dryers, hand creams; you name it, we've got it,'' he said.

At the PrimeStreet auction, shoppers walked off with personal computers in the $300 range, and the contents of the kitchen - including a microwave and a refrigerator that still contained some frozen chicken and two beers - went for less than $200.

And there was a cross section of buyers there for the bidding, which collected about $125,000 to pay off PrimeStreet's creditors.

Bluefin Robotics Corp., of Cambridge, which has about 25 employees, sent office manager Michelle Perttunen and software engineer Reed Christenson to hunt for bargains on computers, and maybe some cabinets.

Their bosses said ``we've got something different for you today,'' said Perttunen. ``They let us out of the office.''

Rich Kelcourse, who runs American Conference Room Equipment, of Waltham, had his eye on a flock of 70 high-end chairs.

Known as the ``Aeron,'' the chairs sell for $699 new and were popular at many dotcoms, where they also came to epitomize the dotcommers' extravagant spending habits. Each chair sold last week for $350 to $375.

And Zoe Bonham came to the auction with co-workers from the company upstairs from PrimeStreet. She looked around at experienced auctiongoers, many of whom described the merchandise to colleagues on cell phones, and wondered if she'd gotten in over her head.

``I'm just looking to buy one laptop,'' she said. ``I think we're the novices.''

But as the auction dragged on, Bonham eventually had to return to work. Word filtered upstairs, however, that laptops were running for more than $400.

``I just decided against it,'' she said.

-- Guy Daley (guydaley1@netzero.net), May 28, 2001


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