Hopefully the kit we won is decent and works. The mean/prudent side of me came into play quite strongly as it often does at these times, and capped bidding on one particular item before it escalated out of control. Someone was very determined to have it, and since it's not *essential* (and I have one already) then prudence seemed the best course.
It must be very difficult pricing items of scientific equipment in a big pharma lab, and some of the pricing was clearly wrong: of 2500 lots, nearly 1000 didn't sell, either because the start price or reserve was too high. I can remember shaking my head at some of the starting prices - who would spend £300 on some rather manky looking pipettes. Some very high value kit didn't go even at trivial prices too.
Of the stuff that's left, I'd really like a microplate filler (there was a lot of competition for them yesterday) and an HPLC system (but they had really high starting prices, £3500-£4000) but it's unlikely to happen. We'll see.