Where the money goes
We followed $3.76 million of open-market resale value across 409 real government auction lots. For every dollar these items were actually worth, the winning bids captured just 47 cents. The other 53 cents never showed up in the auction room — and most of it pooled in one place.
Each ribbon is a share of the $3.76M these 409 lots were really worth. It splits into what the winning bids captured at the gavel (47¢ on the dollar) and the gap that someone else later resold into (53¢) — then the gap branches by what kind of thing it was. Every lot is a receipt: a lot we rated Buy that closed below a trusted resale estimate.
| Stream | Lots | Bids (gavel) | Resale value | The gap |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Equipment & heavy trucks | 99 | $1,475,363 | $3,036,185 | $1,560,822 |
| Consumer & IT goods | 304 | $262,737 | $694,334 | $431,597 |
| eBay-sold & VIN comps | 6 | $10,771 | $30,335 | $19,564 |
| All tracked lots | 409 | $1,748,871 | $3,760,854 | $2,011,984 |
The gavel only collected 47 cents on the dollar
Stack up everything these 409 lots were actually worth on the open market — $3,760,854 — and the auctions that sold them collected $1,748,871. That's 47 cents for every dollar of real value. The remaining 53 cents didn't evaporate; it was simply realized later, by whoever bought the lot and resold it. A Sankey is the honest way to draw that: one fat stream of value enters on the left, and you watch exactly how much of it the government kept versus how much flowed past it.
That gap — $2.01 million across these lots — is the entire reason a resale market in government surplus exists. It isn't a markup we invented; it's the difference between a liquidation price (clear the item, few bidders, low open) and an open-market price (the same item in front of a buyer who went looking for it).
Most of it pools in the heavy stuff
The branch on the right is the part people don't expect. Of the $2.01M gap, 78% — about $1.56M — is heavy equipment and commercial trucks: loaders, dump trucks, fire apparatus. A pallet of monitors or a lot of network switches resells for a few hundred dollars over its hammer price (real money, but a thread on this chart). A retired wheel loader resells for tens of thousands over it. Same auction site, wildly different stakes — which is exactly why knowing what a specific lot is worth is the hard, valuable part.
Total gap across laptops, printers, kitchen and networking gear — priced against eBay-sold and retail comps. A median of about $464 per lot. Steady singles — but 304 of them now.
Total gap across machinery and commercial trucks — priced against realized equipment-auction sold comps. A median of about $15,000 per lot. The fat channel on the chart.
Follow one real lot
The aggregate is one thing; a single lot makes it concrete. Take GovDeals lot 1791-28146 — a 2020 Komatsu WA380-8 wheel loader. It sold at the gavel for $15,400. Against realized equipment-auction sold comps, that machine was worth about $69,000 on the open market. Its flow is even more lopsided than the average lot:
2020 Komatsu WA380-8 — resale value $69,000
One bidder's $15,400 lot turned into one of the most lopsided gaps in the whole set — and it's a real, public close you can check on the receipts page. The chart above is 408 more stories like it, stacked.
These are receipts — not cherry-picks
Every lot in this flow resold above its hammer price, which is fair to be suspicious of. So here's exactly what you're looking at: these 409 lots are our "receipts" — lots GavelGap rated Buy or Strong Buy while they were live, that then closed below a resale estimate from a source we trust. They are, by definition, the wins. We publish them because anyone can check the math against the real auction pages.
That doesn't mean we hide the misses:
What counts as a trusted resale value
The whole product rests on not confusing the auction price with the resale price. A valuation that just predicts the hammer price would erase the very gap this chart is about. So a lot only enters the flow when its resale value is anchored to an independent market:
- Equipment auction sold comps — realized prices from the heavy-equipment resale market (not GovDeals' own floor).
- Retail price comps — live merchant pricing for consumer & IT goods, discounted to a used-resale figure.
- eBay sold comps — what comparable items actually sold for on the open market.
- MarketCheck VIN valuation — VIN-and-mileage vehicle values.
The conservative GovDeals-history floor and loose keyword matches never qualify — if we can't verify the resale number against an outside market, the lot doesn't get into the chart. See the full receipts methodology →
How this was built
Every figure is drawn from GavelGap's own receipts table: closed GovDeals lots we rated Buy or Strong Buy off a trusted resale source, that then sold below that estimate. The flow covers all 409 receipts published to date (closes from early May through late June 2026), verified directly against the live database when this page was built. The three streams are grouped by valuation source; widths are exactly proportional to dollars.
This is a snapshot of our tracked dataset, not a census of all U.S. government surplus — GovDeals is one (large) marketplace, and these are the lots we both called and could independently value. The "gap" is the spread between the validated resale estimate and the winning bid; it's measured before buyer's premium, transport and any refurb, so it is the reseller's working spread, not guaranteed net profit. The "47¢ / 53¢" split is dollar-weighted across the whole set, so the big-ticket equipment lots drive it. Resale figures are market estimates, not guaranteed sale prices, and auction pages can expire or relist. None of this is financial advice.
See the gap before you bid
GavelGap scores live GovDeals listings against real resale comps as you browse — so you can see where the money goes while the lot is still open, not after someone else has resold it.