Online Auction Cuts Costs for NYPD
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

Faced with a near-constant need to purge unclaimed property that has outlived its usefulness as evidence, the New York Police Department has gone online to find a nationwide clientele. But the police don’t use e-Bay, they use a rapidly growing upstart that is specially tailored for departments across the country.
“They need it out of their way and out of their warehouses,” Thomas Lane, chief executive officer of online auctioneer Propertyroom.com, said of the police evidence inventories.
Propertyroom.com, based in San Clemente, Calif., acquires unclaimed property from the NYPD and other police departments nationwide and sells them online. Unlike eBay, Propertyroom.com prices the goods and acts as the seller, sending its trucks across the country to pick up retired evidence at police departments.
“They don’t buy the inventory. They commission it,” Mr. Lane, a former detective on Long Island who co-founded Propertyroom.com more than four years ago, said. “There is a sliding percentage, so if the selling price is high, the municipality gets more money.”
Like many other police departments, the NYPD is required by law to sell at auction confiscated, stolen, or lost property when it no longer serves as evidence and has not been claimed by rightful owners. Firearms and narcotics typically are destroyed, but other items are sold to the highest bidder in a public forum. Motor vehicles are still sold at auction in the age-old manner at municipal warehouses and lots. But since August 2003, the NYPD has disposed of a near-infinite range of general property, including jewelry, computers, cameras, power tools, leather goods, and bicycles, through Propertyroom.com.
“Like many institutions, the NYPD is using the Internet for certain efficiencies,” Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly told The New York Sun. “The online auction is perfectly suited for some of the department’s needs. It’s an electronic gavel that saves us time and money to focus on our principal responsibility to fight crime.”
Propertyroom.com’s Mr. Lane, as a Long Beach detective in the 1970s, would clean out the property room as part of his police duties. As a managing principal of a California investment advisory firm in the late 1990s, he saw the success of e-Bay and determined that a similar model could be applied to property rooms nationwide.
Mr. Lane, whose company cleans, appraises, and photographs the items before posting them online, is accustomed to seeing among his auction lots bags filled with jewelry sporting high-end names – though appearances can be deceiving.
“In that bag will be 10 ‘Rolexes,'” Mr. Lane said. “Most of them are phony and we’ll destroy them. But every now and then you’ll find one that’s real. We sold a $16,000 diamond ring that came to us in a box of costume jewelry.”
Mr. Lane, whose company has between 2,500 and 3,000 items in stock on any given day, said the highest-priced item so far was a 125-year-old Persian rug that went for $17,000. “It came to us as a household item and we did the research and had it appraised,” he said.
At Stealitback.com, the company offers a free service where theft victims can be reunited with stolen goods, and so far about 30 items have been returned to rightful owners.
One of the first New York visitors to the site noticed that his missing guitar was posted for auction. “He was able to identify it because he had his Social Security number burned into the side of it,” Mr. Lane said.
A missing electric guitar was returned to a Japanese punk rocker, Mr. Lane said, and several stolen cleaning machines have been returned to the rental firm Rug Doctor.
Propertyroom.com also auctions goods from art dealers and landholders with too much merchandise on their hands, offering lithographs by Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dali, as well as acreage in Nevada. The company has provided a forum for municipalities to unload antique fire hydrants and for a contractor to sell the coffin he used as a tool gurney.
Propertyroom.com does not sell guns or other weapons, Mr. Lane said, but it does sell rifle scopes, as well as hunting knives “with legitimate uses.” The company is beginning to experiment with online vehicle auctions as well, having recently sold a Harley Davidson for $12,000.