In a metal-frame building with cement floors beside the interstate lay a dismantled museum of Ball State University relics.
Row after row of old copy machines, residence hall furniture and projector screens filled Emily's Multipurpose Center, and the white rock outside was covered with fitness equipment and lights from Irving Gym, each a few feet across.
Hundreds of people browsed among the university's defunct stuff, making mental notes about which items they might bid on as the surplus auction began Saturday morning.
Jim Scott, Ball State's manager of inventory control and moving, said auctions like this one happen two or three times a year.
The university sells anything it can't use because of equipment upgrades, technological advancements or redecorating. Saturday's auction included the sale of cases of toilet paper, a frozen Coke machine and an old menu sign from Block & Barrel among other things.
The university makes a profit by auctioning off the goods, Scott said, rather than by just donating or throwing them out. The money goes to the university's general fund.
Throughout the year, Ball State stores the items it will sell in a warehouse off campus until it is ready for an auction, Scott said.
More than 160 people registered to bid at Saturday's sale, Caroline Walker said. She and her husband Gene work for Dragoo Auction and Realty, which the university has used since the auctions began in 1992.
Walker said most people who come ready to buy are community members, but some students usually come to the auctions looking for cheap furniture or electronics.
"Normally the student turnout has been pretty small," Scott said, though he wasn't sure if that was because students weren't interested in attending or if they weren't aware the auctions were happening.
Dragoo Auction takes care of all the advertising for the auctions, he said, usually putting ads in local newspapers. The auction house has started putting notices about the Ball State sales on its Web site in the last month or so, he said, which he thought might attract more young people.
"We'd just like to see a bigger turnout at times," Scott said.
He also said the crowd depends on what kind of items are for sale.
Ball State art professor Robert Flory attended Saturday's auction without any particular items in mind and ended up with some cabinets for a few dollars. Flory has been going to the Ball State sales since he came to the university seven years ago, he said.
"It's kind of like going to the county fair," he said, describing the fun of the auction atmosphere.
Flory started going to auctions when he owned a used bookstore, he said, and his most interesting finds include an old oil lamp and some Confederate money he found in a box of books.
Local residents Gretchen Cheesman and her son Sam saw an ad for Saturday's auction in the newspaper and came to browse, she said. It was their first auction.
"It's kind of fun to watch," Cheesman said, but she didn't think they would stick around too long.
Two auctioneers working without a break took hours to go through the hundreds of items the university was selling, and Cheesman said she did not want to wait to get through them all.
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