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I've never heard of an auction not allowing dealers, and I attend 50+ per year. Besides being illegal and absolutely impossible to enforce, it's also the worst possible way to get high bids (the goal of any auctioneer).
A dealer who's buying aggressively, in any market, will outbid the average Joe. A dealer who's feeling cheap that day will outbid the average Joe who's feeling cheap. Obviously an aggressive or uninformed or rookie non-dealer will outbid a cheap dealer.
The best dealers stay home and buy from all the cheap AND aggressive dealers who stood around the auction the previous night.
There are "public" and "dealer only" auctions, the public auctions are a joke simply for the fact of a huge misunderstanding of the term "wholesale" in the car market. Dealers certainly aren't getting rich off of the delta between auction price and retail, and, the used iron guys at the corner Auto Mart usually buy from the brand name dealers in the area, older cars aren't welcome on the brand name lots. I've bought at auctions, both dealer and public, but the best buys are from the local dealers on Monday morning after a big trade in weekend. Licensed used car dealers want those nice clean trades, and the brand dealer wants the space freed up for more late model lease returns.
The majority of profitable used car activity is currently found in the lease programs when the lease returns come home to be resold as "certified" vehicles. This is no accident of marketing, the brand dealers have all but cornered the market by utilizing this closed loop arrangement. Any licensed dealer may act as a private individual in a public only auction, the restriction only applies to the dealer who wants to avoid titling the auction vehicle, a common process at dealer only auctions where every vehicle is a resale. It is a paperwork issue and should never be taken as a concession to the public buyer. Auctions, all auctions, want to sell as much as they possibly can.
Those who profess to know the ropes of car buying to the tune of getting a huge savings are outright BS'ers, the practice of pricing the car on the lot has given a whole new perspective on the old game of "whadda ya wanna spend today" used car paradigm. Today's dealers want to be transparent and price the car at "book value" so as to move the inventory in the same manner as the rest of retail sales. We don't haggle over the cost of a pair of shoes--and we shouldn't be haggling over the price of a car..In the used car space it's all about mileage and condition..
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