At 9 a.m. on Saturday, the Customs facility at the Port Purcell dock will resemble a giant community yard sale except that everything will be available to the highest bidder.
The department will hold a public auction to sell off unclaimed goods that have been imported into the territory.
The event was originally scheduled to take place last weekend, but it was rescheduled, according to Government Information Services.
This year the hundreds of available items run the gamut: fishing lures, microscope parts, stickers, a Tom and Jerry cartoon DVD, lumber, an adult toy, car parts, a lamp shade, glass, toner, perfume, and even a karate student’s white belt.
At a previous auction held in 2012, Customs Commissioner Wade Smith said that goods wind up unclaimed for many reasons.
“Sometimes you have goods come in and the carrier failed to notify the importer about them,” Mr. Smith said. “The importer has no idea that it’s arrived. Other times it’s just a mistake — the wrong shipment entirely.”
The missing items are often discovered too late.
When a company or individual learns of an item being stored at the port — a TV, appliance or furniture, for example — storage fees can be “astronomical,” Mr. Smith said.
“A lot of the time the storage fee can be more than the cost of the good,” he said. “So it’ll go to auction.”
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