Justiz-Auktion.de

Justiz-Auktion is the online auction house of the German court system. Published by the Ministry of Justice of North Rhine-Westphalia, run from the Generalstaatsanwaltschaft Hamm and hosted by the state IT service IT.NRW, whose data centre falls under NRW data-protection law. Sellers are courts, public prosecutors, bailiffs (Gerichtsvollzieher) and other enforcement authorities from all 16 German states, joined since January 2015 by Austrian enforcement officers selling through the Justiz-Auktions-Zentrum in Vienna. Stock comes from distraint, criminal confiscation, found property and equipment written off by public offices. Around 500 lots run at any one time across 21 categories, singly and in office-clearance bundles.

What you can buy

• Vehicles: around 37 lots – cars, motorbikes and campers, recently a Rolls-Royce Phantom opening at €43,000, a Daimler Chrysler SLR McLaren at €195,000 and an MZ 250 with sidecar at €1,750, next to a BMW 525i Touring starting at €1 – plus some 38 bicycles, e-bikes, pedelecs and e-scooters.
• Electronics: the biggest section, about 144 lots: smartphones, notebooks, PCs and tablets, printers, monitors, cameras. Fujitsu Esprimo desktops open at €1, a job lot of 20 Kyocera Ecosys printers at €50, a Nintendo Switch at €40, and bundles of ten or forty office PCs at a time.
• Jewellery and valuables: some 36 jewellery lots plus coins and bullion under Wertgegenstände – Cartier wristwatches from €900, a Breitling at €12,000, an Ulysse Nardin at €2,650, hallmarked gold chains, Wiener Philharmoniker gold coins and a Franz Joseph ducat at €410.
• Tools and machines: about 44 lots of workshop tools and office machinery – Knipex pliers, a Makita rotary hammer, Hilti batteries; the separate medical-products aisle is thinner than it sounds, mostly toothbrush heads and toiletries.
• Seized cryptocurrency: there is a Krypto category, often empty. NRW prosecutors sold 215 Bitcoin traced to darknet drug dealing through this platform in 2021, handing the keys over as paper wallets.
• Home, art and everyday goods: 76 lots under Wohnen – furniture, a Bosch dishwasher, collector figures, pictures running up to a Christopher Wool painting opening at €325,000 – plus books, carpets, model kits and clothing carrying labels such as Etro, Missoni and Max Mara.

How the bidding works

Registration on justiz-auktion.de is open to companies and to legally competent private individuals, and the terms name no fee; it asks for a username, your real name or company name, address, email, phone and date of birth. Lots run as ascending auctions with a fixed end time and a proxy agent: enter a maximum and the system raises you one step at a time (€1 below €25, €10 below €500, €100 above €5,000). Buy-now (Sofortkauf) appears only on Austrian lots; German offices are not permitted to use it. In enforcement sales the hammer may only fall on a bid reaching half the item's ordinary sale value (§ 817a ZPO), so the start price there cannot be nominal – public- and private-law lots, by contrast, routinely open at €1. Winners are emailed and must pay within ten days, usually by transfer; cash on collection appears at bailiff sales. Goods go out only once payment has cleared, and collection is due within 30 days.

What to check before you bid

The terms name no buyer's premium, but they give little cover: in enforcement and public-law sales liability for defects is excluded by statute (§ 806 ZPO) and there is no right of withdrawal. Only private-law sales – written-off office kit, found property – carry the usual one-year (used) or two-year warranty and a 14-day withdrawal right. VAT is the seller's obligation alone, and an invoice under the VAT Act follows only where you are legally entitled to one; on shipments outside Germany import duty and tax fall on you. Each lot is written up by the selling office in German, with at least one photo, and you can put public or private questions to that office before bidding. The seller normally ships after payment, at your cost, but plenty of lots are marked Selbstabholung – collection only, by appointment at a courthouse or bailiff's store. Handling runs up to ten days because the selling offices work Monday to Friday, 8:00 to 16:30; the buyer service desk answers until 18:00.