My visit to a grocery auction

Last week I went to a local auction house that was having a grocery auction.  I hadn't been to a grocery auction in a very long time and wanted to go - just to check it out, of course.  I am into couponing and studying grocery store sales flyers so I really didn't need to buy anything.  But I ended up spending $6.  It was interesting and not everything was a good deal.  I spent $6.  $2 each - package of pork chops and $1 each two tubs of  Marzetti caramel dip. 

What I didn't like was that since they sell stuff so quickly - the auctioneer may not always give an accurate description.  People where buying cases of Twix candy bars, but when I saw them being passed out, I saw they were Twix Peanut Butter flavored Twix, not the awesome caramel. (They had more than one carton of the Twix, so when that happens other bidders can also score some cases at the same price as the winning bidder.

On all the items I purchased, they had a ton of the cases of the items. So the auctioneer would do the auction like normal.   But then he would just say "oh that's too much, how about $1 each - who wants some for $1 each?  And then people would raise their auction card - so many people could get the same deal. 

One thing to keep in mind when going to a live auction is that there is always a fee called a "buyer's premium" that is a percentage fee (for example 10%) that is tacked on to your total that you spent).  Also for the food auction, while many items were still well within the expiration date, there was a bunch of stuff that was expired (by about a month) or close to expiring.  One thing I know I will never buy is expired sodas.  Or cases of expired chips that look like an elephant sat on them.    Having said that, I can't wait to go to the next grocery auction!   

 
This picture of of a lot of pork or meat products - a 50 lb slab of pork, a ham, some steaks and other stuff went for about $125.  As you see in the video - people bring coolers for their frozen stuff. 

My haul ($2 each porkchops, $1 each Marzetti caramel dip and bottle of juice (free) - a brand I have never heard of.   I asked another customer in my aisle if I could take a look at the juice and since she had gotten so many, she gave one to me.  She had bought one of the big meat lots of over $100 and they thru in a dozen bottles or so of the juice.    The auctioneer had initially sold them for $3 a bottle but had so many leftover that they combined the leftovers with her meat auction.