Over the past year, his staff has swelled from about 10 to 40 employees. Jeff Crowe, president of DoveBid Auctions in Foster City, says DoveBid had one dotcom auction all of last year. In the first two months of 2001, DoveBid has held eight. You weren't doing any dotcom auctions one year ago. Ron Charyn, of Charyn Auctions in San Francisco, estimates that his business activity has gone up 25 to 30 percent because of the dotcom collapse.
Bankrupt companies have always been a core supplier of the auction market, auctioneers say.
But the explosion of dotcom deaths has perhaps made auctioneers seem more scavengerlike than usual. According to Crowe, during the economic boom of the '90s, auctioneers like DoveBid were dealing mostly with surplus equipment from thriving companies who were upgrading. Metro Publishing Inc. MetroActive is affiliated with the Boulevards Network .