Liquidation, Overstock & Return Pallet Auctions in Australia

Overstock, liquidation, and line clearance auctions can be a great way to pick up a wide variety of items sometimes well below their full retail price. Let’s take a look at the different types of sales, where to find them, and wrap it up with one very important tip you must know about pallet auctions.

Latest Liquidation and Overstock Auction Notices

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About Liquidation, Overstock & Return Pallet Auctions

Overstock auctions – Come about from suppliers and retailers who have in some cases over-ordered a product line in anticipation of strong demand. This may come from a marketing department that anticipates strong sales to tie in with their campaigns thus informing the manufacturers and retailers to stock up.

However, when the marketing drive doesn’t hit the target retailers can be forced to wholesale overstocked items or send them on to an overstock outlet.

This is a win for consumers who can pick up bargains and discounts on a whole range of items which can be anything from jewelry to electrical gadgets. Sometimes the items are liquidated in bulk lots which is a great way to make a few extra dollars by reselling the items online or at car boot auctions and the like.

Otherwise, products are offered as single items at heavily discounted prices to clear them out.

Liquidation Auctions – Informally, liquidation may be used to refer to any rapid conversion of an asset into cash. Liquidation auctions can be born from a supplier, manufacturer, or wholesaler who simply has too much stock and is looking to clear their inventory. Other names used can be overstock, surplus, and disposal. In other cases, it can be from a company or business that may have become insolvent and needs to realise the assets of the company so that the creditors of the company can be paid off.

Scratch and Dent Sales – Quite a lot of brand new electrical goods and appliances, along with other merchandise, can come up at scratch and dent or seconds sales where the manufacturer or retailer will be looking to clear items that can have a variety of cosmetic or other damage that makes them unsuitable for retail or showroom sales.

In many cases, the damage can be purely cosmetic such as scratches and scrapes although you should check the item thoroughly and be very sure of what faults may have and if repair is required or you can live with the defect. It also pays to be clear on whether the item still retains any form of manufacturer warranty.

And like any purchase it pays to be right up to date on the current retail cost of the item you are investigating and it’s for you to weigh up when any risk outweighs the savings. It also pays to be aware of the age of the model series that is being sold, if the manufacturer is getting close to releasing an updated model you may find that item at a runout sale in perfect condition for a similar cost.

There isn’t any limit to the types of products that end up as overstock lines or at liquidation sales – Tools, Business & Office, Computers & IT, Educational, Electronics, Furniture, Toys, Gifts, Health & Beauty products, Jewellery, Music CDs/DVDs, Musical Instruments, Perfume & Aftershave, Sports & Exercise Equipment, Supermarket lines, Travel Goods, Watches and much more.

Retail Returns – All major department stores today have very liberal return policies and returned products are simply shipped off to the central warehouse and later off to a third-party auctioneer, in some cases they do go back to the manufacturer who will then either refurbish or sell as seconds again, via third party auctioneers. In Australia, these auctions come up occasionally and you can find them here.

In the US market, handling the massive volume of returns to places from stores like Amazon, Walmart, etc is an industry in itself, and for more insight on pallet sales and retail returns in the US market see AucMaster.

Where to find auctions for overstock/liquidation etc?

Most major retailers and brands such as Amazon etc, don’t handle their seconds and returns directly, they offload them to a third party, Omaras and Grays handle a lot of retail returns. In some cases, such as for Dell and Lenovo, items are refurbished and auctioned off at Grays. For new listings, keep an eye on our category here.

Liquidation and clearances come up often at other auction houses including Ross’s, Slattery Auctions, and Pickles. For those, keep an eye on auction notices in our Liquidation and Overstock category or Upcoming auctions.

Pallet Lots of Returned Goods

You’ll often see pallet lots of TVs, Dyson vacuums, and even laptops going for auction along with pallets of miscellaneous items from business closures and the like. How much value is in those lots will depend on your own skills and first-hand knowledge of the items.

Amazon return pallets are a hot topic, and there is no shortage of YouTube videos hyping up the possibility of a big score. Again, how much value is in those lots will depend on your skills, to repair and refurbish items, and first-hand knowledge of the item’s true value. What makes that difficult in the case of Amazon returns, and other major retailers, is the fact that it can be a complete mystery as to what the pallet may contain.

A word of caution, there’s a big trend in the US for re-marketing of pallet lots, where traders, often quite large, buy a truckload of returns to skim off any high-value or like-new items, and then re-market the pallet. That’s not the pallet you want.

 

This article was first published on April 22, 2010, and updated Feb 2, 2024