How a consigned machine is priced, and what actually moves the number

Ask 3 people what a machine is worth and you will get 3 answers, and all of them can be defensible. That is not because anybody is guessing. It is because a used machine has no list price. It has a market, and that market is a small number of people who need that specific capability this year.

So the honest starting point is this: a machine is worth what a buyer pays for it. Everything before that moment is an estimate. What follows is what the estimate is actually built from.

What sets the number, in rough order of weight

Whether a second-hand market exists at all for this class of machine. This dominates everything else. A general-purpose machine with a working second-hand market carries value almost anywhere. A machine built for 1 product, in 1 plant, with 1 set of tooling is worth what the 2 companies who need it will pay, and if neither of them is buying this year, condition does not save it. The first thing we do with your list is tell you which category each machine falls into.

Completeness. Tooling, dies, change parts, spare rolls, the control cabinet, the manuals, the wiring diagrams, the software and the nameplate. A complete machine is 1 machine. A machine missing its tooling is a machine plus a problem, and the buyer prices the problem, not the machine. This is the largest controllable factor on the list, and it costs nothing to get right.

Whether it runs, and whether that can be shown. A machine a buyer can see running is a different asset from a machine sitting on a pallet with its cables cut. If you can run it and record it before it is disconnected, do that, even if it is only 2 minutes on a phone. That recording travels with the listing.

Age and generation, which are different things. Age is a number. Generation is whether the controls, drives and safety systems are ones a plant would accept today. Sound mechanics with a modern control retrofit can outrank a newer machine with obsolete electronics nobody can support.

What it costs the buyer to get it home. Removal, freight, rigging and reinstallation all come off the top of what a buyer will pay. This is one of the real advantages of consigning to a warehouse. A machine already sitting on our floor in South Carolina, on the ground, near a dock, is cheaper and less risky for a buyer to collect than the same machine on the third floor of a working plant behind a structural wall. That difference shows up in what the machine sells for.

Condition, honestly recorded. Wear, damage, missing guards, corrosion. Recording the faults raises the price rather than lowering it, because a buyer who has seen the faults in the photographs is a buyer who does not renegotiate on the day of collection. Every deal that falls apart at collection was priced on a description that hid something.

Timing and supply. If 4 identical machines came out of other closures the same quarter, yours is competing with them. If new-machine lead times in that industry are long, yours is worth more this year than it was last year.

Why we do not publish figures

We publish no prices for machines, on this site or anywhere else, because a published figure is stale the moment it exists. Values move with demand in the industry that uses the machine, with the price and lead time of the new equivalent, with freight rates, and with how many of the same machine came onto the market that quarter. A number that ignores all of that is not an assessment, it is a guess with a decimal point.

What we will do, before you spend anything on freight, is tell you plainly whether we think we can sell your machine, what kind of buyer we would be selling it to, and what we would expect the market for it to look like. If we think it is a hard sell, we say so then, not after it has arrived.

How the price is set on a consigned machine

Once the machine is with us and we have inspected and photographed it, the listing price is set from what comparable machines have actually been selling for into that industry, what condition and completeness your machine is in, and what it will cost a buyer to collect it. We handle the negotiation. Your share of the final sale price is the one set out in your agreement, which is signed before the machine ships.

That last point matters more than any pricing theory. There is no situation in which you find out the commercial terms after the machine has left your floor. Commission, payment timing, storage, the minimum period, inbound freight and rigging, insurance while it is with us, preparation and cleaning, and what happens if it does not sell are all agreed in writing before anything moves.

What to do first

Send us the list. Make, model, year, serial number where you can find it, quantity, condition, whether it is still under power, and what tooling goes with it. Add photographs if you have them. We will tell you what we think we can sell, what we would not ship if we were you, and what the agreement would look like.