How to sell your equipment

Start at List equipment. You need an account, but not a bidder registration — selling and bidding are separate things here, and you can sell without ever registering to bid.

What the form asks for:

• What it is — title, category, manufacturer, model, and year.
• What condition it is in — a condition rating and a description in your own words.
• The specifics buyers ask about — power requirements and hours of use. These are optional fields and they are the ones that generate the most questions when they are left empty.
• Where it is — city and state. Buyers arrange collection themselves, so location changes who bids.
• Starting bid, and a reserve if you want one. See setting a starting bid and reserve below.
• Photographs — up to 20, at 20 MB each.

You do not choose the auction dates. We set the start and end when we approve the listing, so lots are spread across the calendar rather than all closing at once.

Every listing is read by a person before it goes live. We are checking that the equipment is described accurately, that the photographs show what they need to, and that the specifications are consistent — not judging whether we think it will sell.

When it is approved, we set the start and end times and the listing goes active. You get a notification when that happens.

If we cannot approve it, we tell you why. That is almost always something specific and fixable: photographs too dark to show condition, a model number that does not match the plate, a description that leaves out damage visible in the photos. Fix it and resubmit.

Bids appear live — you do not need to refresh to watch them, and neither do bidders. Everyone bidding has already had their business verified and a card or bank account checked by us, so the people bidding on your lot are people who can pay for it.

Bidders can ask questions in the comments on your listing. Answering them quickly is the single most useful thing you can do while an auction is running; an unanswered question about a hydraulic leak is read by everyone else looking at the lot.

Bids in the last two minutes extend the auction. Any bid inside that window pushes the end time out to two minutes from that bid, and it keeps happening until the bidding stops. Nobody wins by being fastest at the buzzer, and your lot ends at what somebody was actually willing to pay.

You cannot bid on your own listing, and neither can anyone bidding on your behalf.

There are two endings.

Sold. There was at least one bid and the highest one met your reserve. We record the sale, notify you both, and start collecting the buyer’s premium from the winning bidder.

Closed without a sale. Nobody bid, or the bidding finished below your reserve. Nothing is owed by anyone. See if your item does not sell.

The buyer pays us the 5% buyer’s premium, capped at $15,000. That is our entire fee and it comes from them, not from you — nothing is deducted from your sale price.

When that payment clears, contact details are released — yours to the buyer, theirs to you. A card clears immediately, so that is usually the same day. A bank debit takes about 4 business days. It is automatic; there is nothing for you to click.

From there the sale is between the two of you. You agree payment for the equipment directly with the buyer, and you agree collection or shipping directly with them. We are not a party to that and we do not hold the money for it.

Get the terms in writing before the machine moves: what is being paid, when, by what method, and who is responsible for rigging and transport.

Photographs decide more auctions here than descriptions do. A buyer committing five figures to a machine they have not stood next to is reading your photos for the things sellers do not usually mention.

• Shoot the whole machine first, from several angles, with enough room around it to show scale.
• Photograph the data plate so the model and serial are legible. This is the single most requested photo and the one most often missing.
• Show the wear. Photograph the damage, the corrosion, the worn belt. A buyer who finds it on collection becomes a dispute; a buyer who saw it in the listing priced it in and bid anyway.
• Include the contact surfaces — anything product-facing on food equipment, plus wear parts and tooling.
• Light it properly. Daylight or a work lamp. Phone photos are fine; dark photos are not.

Up to 20 images, 20 MB each. The first one is what buyers see when browsing.

Start low. A low starting bid is not a low sale price — it is what gets the first bidders in, and the bidding takes it where it is going. A high starting bid on an unproven lot most often produces no bids at all, which tells you nothing about what the machine is worth.

A reserve is optional and protects you from selling below a number you have decided on. Bidders are shown whether the reserve has been met. Set it close to your honest walk-away price: a reserve nobody reaches is an auction that runs its full length and sells nothing.

Bid increments rise with the price, so where you open also decides how quickly the bidding can climb:

Both figures are set when you create the listing. If you need to change them before the auction is approved, tell us and we will sort it out before it goes live.