State surplus property is customer friendly

Bridget Pauley of Elkview is interested in one of the two pianos tucked into the corner of the surplus property warehouse in Dunbar.  With a price tag of two thousand dollars though it may be a little steep for her, but she’s found some other bargains here like kitchen chairs.

“Oh, there’s a bunch of everything over there,” Pauley says.  “Chairs, desks, end tables, coffee tables.  You name it they got it over there.”

This could be called the state’s permanent yard sale.  Elizabeth Perdue is the director of the surplus property warehouse which looks a lot like a Sam’s club, but dustier.   

This is a room filled with CPU’s from state computers.   

“Most people that come in have an idea of what they want.  They’ve usually come here numerous times, Perdue says.  “We have schools that come in so they just don’t buy one or two they leave with a truck full.”

 “How much does a CPU like this go for?”

“You can look right here at the posted price.  This one’s 25 dollars.

 “That’s a pretty good deal, wouldn’t you say, a pretty good deal?”

“Oh yeah, 25 dollars, you put your own hard drive in it, load your own operating system, you’ve got yourself a good little computer for cheap.”

Posted prices on surplus goods is relatively new.  It used to be customers would come to the warehouse, find what they wanted to buy and make a bid on it.  But about three years ago the state made surplus shopping more customer friendly.   

Elizabeth takes me to another warehouse.  It’s not air conditioned so large fans are keeping the air moving.  Here, there are dozens of light oak chest of drawers and bed side tables.

“This is lodge furniture and we have a lot of it,” Perdue explains.  “We’ve also sold a lot of it.  The majority of that I believe came from Pipestem. And you can see we have sofas, some of them are sleeper sofas, I know we had some in here.  And chairs, we always have plenty of chairs.”

These are wooden, I’ve got to think 1930’s kind of antique chairs aren’t they?  You see these throughout the Capital.  When you see something like this is it considered an antique?

“We have to go on line and do our research.  If we’re not sure we make some phone calls,” Perdue says.  “We’ve also talked to Culture and History when it comes to certain items because we don’t always know when it comes in here if it has any real historic value or anything so we try to do some checking to make sure that it doesn’t go out of here without making sure that someone else in the state wants it first.”

Anna Jones has driven four hours from Hindman, Kentucky to shop here today.  She’s looking for office furniture.

“ My sister has a company that takes care of intellectually challenged individuals and so we need office equipment,” Jones explains. “There really good deals.  I have been here to this place before and bought stuff so I knew it was here.  But we’re getting those 16 chairs at one time.  I wanted the wooden ones but I didn’t get here in time for the wooden ones.  But you can’t beat the prices really.  And I think it’s a lot because the general public doesn’t know they can come here and buy things.  They don’t know where the place is, they don’t know what it’s all about but I’m glad I found it a couple years ago.  I come here probably every six months just to see what all they have.”

Anna says she and her sister will rent a U-haul truck to move all of their treasures back to Hindman, Kentucky.

In a fenced area there is artwork and something unusual.

“ This is our receiving area that’s why we have it gated off.  All the items that come to the warehouse have to be checked off retirement documents so they come through this door before they make it in here.”

Hanging on the wall is a shovel with five handles that obviously was used for some sort of ceremonial ground breaking.   

 “Yes absolutely, that has been here for sometime,” Perdue notes.  “I’m not sure when it was used but it was here when I started a few years ago so we do have a few unique items like that we keep ourselves.  Everything’s not necessarily for sale.”   

But the used state vehicles sure are.  There’s a whole lot full of cars, vans, SUV’s and trucks.   

 “We have a lot of dealers who typically stop by but we want the public to know that they can come here and by it directly from us and not have to pay that dealer markup.”