Word: auction
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Bicycles. At a New York Police Department auction sale, 1,500 people tried to buy 88 secondhand bicycles, paid as high as $37 apiece for them. But 155 cars had no buyers, were sold for junk...
Horses. At Chicago's public auction of saddle horses fortnight ago, city farmers and suburbanites outbid horse dealers and liverymen to buy 100 horses at an average of $165 each-$35 over last year's price...
Used-car sales are just as bad-maybe worse. Prices are 25% to 33% below last year. At a New York City Police Department "lost-strayed-or-stolen" auction, 1,500 bidders bypassed 155 second-hand cars (except as junk), bid up to $37 for second-hand bicycles. In the Carolinas, new and used-car sales were off 50%; in Florida, many a disgusted dealer got ready to quit; in Maine, there were more sellers than buyers. Even in the gasoline-rich West and Midwest, rumors of rationing slowed sales down...
George McNear got into railroading in 1926, when he spied T.P. & W. on the auction block, outbid giant Pennsylvania R.R. by paying $1,300,000 ($130,000 in cash). T.P. & W. hardly seemed a bargain, but it had one big asset: over its 239 miles of track (between Effner, Ind. and Keokuk, Iowa) transcontinental freight can save days by dodging the Chicago terminal bottleneck. McNear got to work and within 45 days the long-bankrupt road was making money. It has made money ever since. Last year it earned a neat $365,000 on $2,775,000 revenue...
...late Charles M. Schwab's 27-room mansion in Bethlehem, Pa. went on the auction block, drew one bid: $5,000. Administrators of the estate declined, decided to try again later...