America auction fever grips the net

The United States government is using the season of goodwill to try to cut its record budget deficit of almost $14 trillion (£9trn) - with a cut-price online auction that it sees as a rival to eBay.

Officials hope buyers full of the Christmas spirit will be lining up to bid on items including jewellery seized in drugs raids, rare coins, computers, and other unusual assets for which Uncle Sam has no further use.

"It's amazing what the government has for sale that would make perfect Christmas gifts," said David Robbins, director of the US general services administration's office of personal property management.

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"The sales are a way of saving the taxpayer dollars, and also getting these items back into the hands of taxpayers," he said.

The US disposes of surplus property to the public through two main internet sites - govsales.gov and gsaauctions.gov.

Bargains available include anything from overseas properties - houses and flats that might or might not have once housed US spies; vehicles including ambulances, fire tenders and tractors from various government agencies to the more mundane including photocopiers, office furniture and even a dentist's chair. Towards the top end of the scale is a group of 200 $50 gold coins dating to 1880, for which bidding is close to $150,000.

But it is the smaller and more readily transportable items such as $18,000 Rolex watches selling for a quarter of that amount, pearls, gold and diamonds that often prove a bigger hit with customers, even if many of the goods have a somewhat suspect background. "We have jewellery that might have been seized from drugs dealers or bought by the FBI for use in stings and no longer required," Mr Robbins said. "Sometimes we never know the exact history of an item."

That leaves the buyer to speculate on an item's provenance. They never know if a satellite phone or GPS unit they are bidding on was last in the hands of a CIA agent on a covert mission overseas or a junior ranger from the US Forest Service just checking in with the office from a field in South Dakota.

One of the more interesting items Mr Robbins said his websites have sold in the past include the US Coastguard cutter Tamaroa that carried out a heroic rescue during the 1991 Perfect Storm off the Massachusetts coast, which inspired the George Clooney film of the same name.

He is particularly excited about new property he expects to be able to list next year - "too late for this Christmas but perfect for procrastinators," he said - once Nasa retires its space shuttle fleet.

Hundreds of heat-resistant tiles that flew into space will appear on the auction sites, joining existing memorabilia already released by the US space agency for sale, including flight jackets and shirts worn by crews aboard the international space station.

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Mr Robbins said he hoped the Christmas sales push would complete what has already been a successful year.

"Our list of bidders has grown to 56,000 this year, but we're always hoping to get more once the word gets out there," Mr Robbins added.

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