Couple takes unexpected plunge into online auction business

NICOLLET, Minn. – If there's one lesson that Kimberly Salisbury has learned from selling industrial and commercial equipment in online auctions, it's that people will buy anything.

Components to an antiquated conveyor belt system? Sold. Capacitors and other electronic components to 1950s electronics? Sold.

Antique birthing chair? Sold.

"We didn't ask what they were gonna use it for," she says, laughing. The more esoteric the item, it seems, the more likely it will sell.

The business, which she operates with her husband, Jason, is called NPS Industrial Surplus, and they run it out of a Nicollet warehouse a block from their home, the Mankato Free Press reported. They specialize in selling farm machinery, industrial surplus and commercial equipment. They often work with people who have a lot of stuff they'd like to convert to cash.

It's like an online estate sale, and their pitch is that a seller can fetch higher prices than they could by holding a live auction or sale.

Earlier this year, they became an affiliate of the online auction site K-BID, which sells a variety of industrial, agricultural and personal property throughout the Midwest. Recent auctions included the floor of a basketball court and everything inside a liquidated boot repair shop.

"We wouldn't have planned it this way, but we wouldn't have it any other way," Salisbury says.

The auctions run online for a few weeks, but most of the action happens in the final hours and minutes. Watching the seconds tick down — and the prices tick up — may be the most exciting part of the business.

Though Salisbury still does some graphic design work, most of her time is now spent with the online auction business. She says it's gratifying work.

"We're working for ourselves and not a big corporation," she says.