Thomas Breen photo
Joe Spain, Anthony Camposano hunt at eviction storage auction.
“Ten…”
“Twenty!”
“Thirty…”
“Fifty…”
Anthony Camposano wasn’t folding. He was looking at a large pile of used clothes, furniture, bikes and home appliances abandoned by an evicted household. He hoped that somewhere inside would be a tool he could resell.
DPW’s storage facility at the Armory.
Camposano was one of three bidders to show up Monday morning for the Department of Public Works’ (DPW) monthly sale of abandoned goods picked up at foreclosures and evictions around town. DPW staffer Shaun Brown hosts the eviction and foreclosure property sale promptly at 10 a.m. every third Monday of the month in the department’s storage facility on the County Street side of the Goffe Street Armory.
The six storage units’ worth of property on sale on Monday had been picked up by the department from foreclosures and evictions that took place in May 2018 or earlier. The department gives property owners a month after their foreclosure or eviction to come by the facility and pick up their belongings, which the department boxes, shrinkwraps, and stacks in individual storage stalls.
DPW’s Shaun Brown.
If property owners don’t come to pick up their belongings within a month, then they go up for sale the following month. Brown said individual pallets start at $10. Interested buyers must put down a $10 deposit with Brown before the auction begins.
On Monday morning, the three bidders were Camposano, a 31-year-old East Haven resident who resells tools, antiques, vintage clothing and home appliances primarily on Craigslist; Joe Spain, who runs a thrift shop in Bridgeport; and a New Haven man who declined to be identified but said that he holds sidewalk sales on Dixwell Avenue in which he gives away or sells the furniture and clothing he picks up at eviction auctions.
All three bidders said they are regulars at eviction and foreclosure storage auctions, both in New Haven and in the surrounding area.
Brown took the three prospective buyers to a stall piled high with upside down chairs and boxes of clothing. Campsano walked through the mountains of used goods, shining a flashlight into every nook and crevice.
Brown began the auction at $10.
Camposano and Spain.
Campasano and the New Haven man met each other’s bid at each step. The price for the unit went from $10 to $20 to $40 to $80. The New Haven man went as high as $140. Campasano said $150.
The New Haven man shook his head, and Campasano won the auction.
“This makes it worth it,” he said as he found a laser level still in its original packaging. He said he’d be able to resell it for at least $50 more than he spent on the entire pile of stuff. Then he continued.
As he carefully unpacked the different boxes he had just purchased, Campasano said he grew up going to weekend tag sales in East Haven with his grandparents. He said he went to his first foreclosure auction while still in high school.
The turning point for his career, he said, came when he went to a storage auction in Indiana while still a college student at Purdue. He said he and his friend were driving to the mall, saw a big sign on the side of the road that read “Auction Today,” and decided to pull over.
They spent $80 on a storage unit, which contained a vending machine and $80 worth of change. Since then, he said, his primary source of income has been reselling goods he picks up at storage auctions.
“It’s not the same stuff over and over,” he said about how this job beats going to an office every day. “It’s fun, and it pays the bills.”
Camposano finds a laser level.
When he saw the laser level, still in its box, he figured he could sell it for $200 at least. That would be $50 more than he paid for the entire unit’s worth of goods. He said he would likely donate most of the used clothing and furniture at a nearby Goodwill.
Spain and one of his employees wheel a pallet to the center of the storage facility.
Joe Spain also bought two units worth of property on Monday, though he never went higher than $10 or $20 in his bids. He showed up with two young men to help him load the property onto the back of his pick up truck and ferry it back to his store in Bridgeport.
When asked what he was looking for at today’s auction, Spain replied, “Anything we can make a dollar on.”
He said he was trained as a plumber, but he dropped that line of work when he saw how much money could be made in the thrift store business. He said at one storage auction he purchased for $1,700 restoration equipment used to repair homes after a fire. He said the very next day, he sold that equipment for $10,000.
“Once you’re in the mix,” he said, “you’re good to go.”
Sasha and her son Noel come to the Armory to pick up their property.
Also at the storage facility on Monday morning were a young woman named Sasha and her 1‑year-old child Noel. They weren’t at the Armory to bid on any abandoned property. They were there to pick up their own.
Sasha said she and her son had been evicted from their home earlier in the month.
“I thought I was going to lose all this stuff,” she said with relief when she saw her and her child’s belongings piled up in the storage unit.
Brown and another DPW employee helped disassemble her tower of goods as Sasha waited for her friend to come and help drive them to her new apartment. Sasha said she would likely bring most of her belongings to her new apartment. Some, she said, she planned on leaving in storage.
Interesting.
Camposano made his money back on the CST Berger 26x laser level.
It would be cool & convenient if participants could donate things they don't want on the spot. NHV/DPW could employ teens to sort and clean things and they could even let the teens balance books and keep any profits to instill some entrepreneurship.