Treasure hunting at David City auction business

DAVID CITY, Neb. (KOLN) – Old farm equipment found during a barn or machine shed clean out can find a new home with the help of Kobza Online Auctions.

We talked with John Kobza, who owns this online auction business with his wife. He says many family members are involved with the operation. “We sell on AuctionTime,” Kobza said. “AuctionTime is a division of Sandhills publishing in Lincoln. It is their online bidding platform. The sales happen each Wednesday. The sale starts at 10 a.m. each Wednesday, and we spend a lot of time gearing up for that sale.”

The Kobza family has been involved with auctions for a long time. “My dad started the auction company in the 1970′s,” Kobza said. “We’ve been in the business for 54 years. As we went through time, we could see that the online thing was catching on more and more. We signed up with AuctionTime. We thought it would help sell a few big items in between our spring and fall consignment sales. We never dreamed it would explode, and be as popular as it is now. In the 8 years we’ve been selling, we’ve crossed the 51,000 item threshold. We’ve sold 14,000 items each of the last two years.”

Eight family members work together at the business. “We describe ourselves as a company that sells everything from coins to bulldozers, and everything in between,” Kobza said. “We do not sell household goods. We do sell farm antiques like cream separators or old grinders. Farmers retire a piece of equipment and they bring it to us. We are a one-stop shop where they can bring something to us, and we take care of the pictures, we display it, and we have Highway 15 frontage. The farmer is not responsible for having to show it on his place, it’s off his farm, he doesn’t have to worry about loading it, we take care of all of that, and send him a check.”

In the last three weeks, the family has moved into a new building. “AKRS Equipment build a new John Deere dealership just down the road a half mile, and so we bought their old building,” Kobza said. “This will give us more opportunity to put more things under roof.” If you’d like to know more about Kobza Online Auctions, just go to kobzaonlineauctions.com.

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