Kaua'i plantation items sell at laid-back auction

By Jan TenBruggencate
Advertiser KauaÎi Bureau

HANAMA'ULU, Kaua'i —The auction of the movable assets of Amfac's Lihu'e and Kekaha plantations went through the day and into last night.

The sale by the worldwide auction firm Dovebid saw items going for a few dollars to sums in the hundreds of thousands. Heavy equipment such as cane harvesters, graders and bulldozers generated the highest prices.

One nearly new harvester went for $150,000. A blacksmith's anvil sold for $500. Three Allis-Chalmers engines went to a sole bidder for $100.

Dovebid sold items as small as a roll of wooden stakes and as long as a 75-ton lowboy trailer. You could pick up a metal lathe or an arc welder, a bunch of pickup truck hulks for parts, or a locker full of parts of tractors.

More than 500 people crowded into the Radisson Kaua'i Beach Hotel ballroom for an event that saw more than 1,400 items sold.

Nobody showed up in a suit. The vast majority of participants were men, most of them wearing jeans and boots, and many of those wearing cell phones and multipurpose tools on their belts.

A fair number were simply curious. Fast-talking auctioneers, some bids coming from abroad over the internet, and free lunches provided plenty of reason for hanging around.

Some simply stayed long enough to bid on a single item.

"The tractor I came for, I had a $10,000 budget. I never got to bid. It went to $12,000, then $15,000 and ended up at $40,000," said one unsuccessful bidder.

For those who didn't want to hang around, the show was broadcast live on the Web.