To sell or buy a car through auction could be a good idea, especially for those who have old or rebuilt cars for sell or who want to buy a car through auction. But before that one need to have general understanding about the US car auction.  

If you are a dealer - If you are a dealer and selling cars at an US car auction, it's like a game of poker. The vehicles that you transport to the US car auctions are your deck of cards. Everyone is calling everyone else's bluff, and you must convince the bidders that your car is worth the minimum opening bid. We are sure you wouldn’t like to drive a transport full of unsold cars all the way back home. If you do sell a vehicle the auto auction house might charge you a $250 seller fee, depending on the auction house. Sometimes it could be a percent of the sale. If your car does not sell, they still charge you a fee. So what we learn from this, we learn that try to avoid auction your car at a wholesale auto auction. Unless you have a rare car that is worth something, always auction your car on the open market.

If you are a bidder - If you are going to bid for a car during US car auction always remember some basic points.

1. Being a smart bidder use a device called the Elcometer. It is a digital coating thickness gauge to measure the thickness of the paint during US car auction. This tool is simple in use, you just touch it to the car's painted surfaces, and the LCD readout tells you how thick the paint is. This is useful in flagging cars that have had body work done. You see, the factory paint jobs are usually 4.5 mils thick.

When a body shop paints a panel, their process is not refined like the factory, and they often paint over existing paint or doubling the thickness. Once your LCD readout hits the 8-12 mil range, you know that body work was done on this car. As each car in the US car auction drives up the auction lane to be bid on, you will see a group of dealers rush up to it and start placing their Elcometer on all the major panels, doors, hood, and trunk, looking for evidence of body work in auctioned car, during the US car auction.