Bargain hunters box clever with cargo
● Looking for a gift for the person who has everything? How about a container filled with bull horns?
This and other bizarre items are among tons of goods auctioned off by the South African Revenue Service this year after being abandoned at the country’s ports.
And for some, these oddball purchases can turn into a gold mine.
“While there are regulars who buy and sell as their business, there are new people attending all the time due to television shows like Auction Hunters and Storage Wars,” said Martin Nel, an auctioneer for Auction-All.
Containers are abandoned because people can’t afford the import duty, have tried to bring in items illegally, or don’t have the correct permit.
These items pile up in SARS warehouses where, after several months, they are auctioned off to cover costs and make space for more incoming items.
The most recent SARS auction took place last month in Durban, where several hundred people engaged in a bidding battle for items ranging from incubators to bales of hairpieces.
When bidding began for the 71 bales, there were shouts of “What hair is it?” The lot fetched R19 000.
“The weirdest thing I saw at the last auction was a whole container of bull horns. It didn’t sell, though. I heard they grind it down to make gelatine from it,” Nel said.
East London businessman Kusta Nzimela spent more than R480 000 at the Durban auction.
Nzimela, who runs a construction and plant-hire business, said he had been attending auctions around the country since 1993.
“The strangest buy, as there was no interest, was a ploughing mechanism which I bought for R1 000. I got a buyer from Bloemfontein who paid R175 000,” said Nzimela.
Clothes in bulk are a standard at these auctions — but once bought, whether new or second-hand, they have to immediately be shipped out of South Africa and off the continent because they threaten the local textile industry.
Nel said: “Most of the new clothes head to Dubai. It’s a regular thing for [the South African buyers]. They have their people there and they sell it on because there are a lot of people going to Dubai to buy cheap clothes.
“The other stuff that’s normally a bargain are the cars. The cars are not allowed to stay in South Africa, so they usually end up on a truck to Botswana, Zambia or Mozambique.”
SARS spokesman Sandile Memela said other common items were equipment components, telephone sets, medicines, dataprocessing machines and accessories and parts for vehicles.
“In 2017 it was mainly goods originating from China, Germany and the US.”
Some people try to bring in illegal products by packing other items in front of them. Or they place items that have cheap import duty in the front of more expensive items.
Nel said: “In the first two metres [of the container] some people put boxes of dolls and then behind that lights. There’s not a lot of [excise] duty on dolls, but on those lights they would pay very high duty.”
This is one of the reasons containers are unpacked fully to allow potential buyers a viewing a day or two before the auction.
According to SARS, container goods must be cleared within 28 days, after which they are moved to a state warehouse, where they can be sold after 60 days. This does not apply to prohibited items such as fully automatic, military and unnumbered weapons, explosives, poison and other toxic substances, or counterfeit goods.