Fire Sale: Dead Dot-Coms Auction Wares
March 19 -- If you're wondering what became of all that money you spent on dot-com stocks, look no further than a warehouse in Santa Clara, Calif.
That's where a mountain of computer equipment from bankrupt dot-com companies in Silicon Valley is being stored, awaiting a buyer at auction.
Look around and at any given moment you can see the residue of Web sites that are now just a memory: companies like Bestoffer.com, Greenlight.com, Redgorilla.com, and more.
But unlike most auctions, many of the wares on display here are practically new. Some of the computers are fresh out of the box. And instead of being a sale of scarce goods, there's plenty more where this high-tech stuff came from.
Going Back in Time
When Larry Kearns, a prospective shopper looking for bargains in the warehouse last Thursday, booted up a confiscated computer from a now-defunct company, he felt like he was looking back in time.
"This ends on February 9 at 8:30 in the morning," said Kearns, noting when the worker using the computer must have last turned off his machine.
Indeed, the possessions of some dot-coms go from the office to the auction block within weeks.
For entrepreneurs, going out of business is a fact of life. And for those wandering through confiscation warehouses, it's not much different from walking through a salvage yard and finding fascination in debris from bad wrecks.
"Part of this is seeing the demise of the money culture and how much wealth there is," added Kearns.
Or, as is the case here, how much wealth there was.
Pennies on the Dollar
On Friday, at a hotel in Sunnyvale, not far from Santa Clara, the possessions of Bestoffer.com, a former used-car Web site, were sold to the highest bidders.
Don Cowan, a partner at Cowan Alexander Equipment Group, which arranges auctions of high-tech equipment, helped organize the auction and estimated that up to 500 people assembled to buy about half a million dollars worth of goods.
That includes computers, servers made by Sun Microsystems, routers and networking equipment from Cisco and office equipment, including phones and chairs.
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