I got on the Internet the other day at home and was checking my email when I got a message from a friend about an auction site.

Since I am not a paid spokesperson, I won't tell you which one, but I did visit the site and have a look around.

They had almost everything listed there, from stuff you never see to stuff you see all of the time.

Comic books, chess sets, baseball cards, old glass, new trinkets, old cars....Old cars?

Yes, the site had thousands of old cars listed, everything from Barracudas to Mustangs and Corvettes.

It was like candy land for me. I saw cars that I would love to own, cars I could never afford to own and cars I haven't ever seen before around here.

Of course, everyone had a "real gem" or a "low-mileage wonder." No one ever just simply tells it like it is. "For Sale-Must See: One piece of junk clunker that hasn't run for any period of time without major maintenance of some kind. This vehicle will cost more to operate than you are paying for it. Uses too much gas and a quart of oil with each tank full. Entirely covered with rust and corrosion, this piece of trash won't last long, so hurry and buy it now.

Can you imagine a little honesty in the car selling business? That's why men love to trade cars, we all go into it with a false sense of euphoria and phrases like, "I can fix that" and "That there door falling off ain't no problem a'tall."

At any rate, my interest was further piqued when I noticed that there were also a few old junkers like the ones I tend to be able to afford and collect.

I looked up the fee for using the service and signed up. As it turned out, you don't have to pay to buy stuff, only to sell stuff.

I put on one of my cars, a rusty old 1951 Buick Roadmaster that needed more than a little work. I had to take a few pictures of the car and then put them into my computer. Then I wrote a little description, put in the title number and mileage and off I went.

It only cost me about $25 to list it, so I figured that wasn't bad. I think they charge less for smaller stuff, but I'm not sure.

Soon after listing it, I looked it up on the Internet and I already had a bid. I was so excited.

Someone named "The Devil Clown" had bid $100 on the car. Even though I wanted to sell it, I really didn't want to do business with a person who

called him or herself "The Devil Clown." However, I was pleased with the $100 bid, which was probably only about $50 more than the car was worth in one piece.

Then again, I paid $300 for it, so there you go. I could have made more than $100 on the car by crushing it.

After that first day, it got to be quite a habit — checking my email and then looking up the price of my old car on the Internet.

After the tenth day, which was the last day of the auction, I looked for the last time and realized that the bid had gone up to $305.

So, if you don't count the price of advertising, I turned a nifty little $5 profit on that deal.

If I keep going at this rate, I will be a millionaire in about one million years.

But that's not the point. It was time to sell the old car and this was a painless way to do it. I suppose I could have went with a regular auction, but you have to have more than one car to do it.

Without the Internet, this sell would not have been possible. Isn't that almost something out of a science fiction movie?

I never would have believed 10 years ago that I would be selling a junk car at an Internet auction site in the year 2001.

Of course, that space odyssey movie didn't exactly come true and aliens still haven't invaded (at least not the little green kind) but I did see Elvis in the local Qwikee-Mart.

Well, he looked a lot like Elvis to me. He was eating a big donut and drinking a cup of cappuccino.

As for the old cars, now I just have three or four left. I should be able to sell them pretty quickly if all goes well for me.

I was a little skittish about putting my good old stuff on the Internet because I thought maybe it wouldn't bring enough money.

However, I figured out a way to put a ‘reserve price' on my auction so I didn't have to worry about it at all. If it doesn't bring what you want, then you don't have to sell.

What a deal, huh?

I liked it pretty well myself. The only trouble I had to go through was climbing over the barbed wire fence to get into the pasture and take a couple of photographs. After I side-stepped a couple of ‘land mines' in the field, that sure was a small price to pay. I guess selling a junk car never was so easy on me.

There is another benefit, too. I can just hear my neighbors all breathing a collective sigh of relief when I come over to pick up one of my cars instead of bringing in another one.

Get more tongue in cheek commentary this week's issue of the Alleghany News!

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