Fast, Furious Sale Customary at Auction : Confiscated loot: Bidding often goes quickly for seized and abandoned items. Even the feather-plucking machine finds a buyer--eventually.

In a U.S. Customs Service auction, where confiscated and abandoned loot is sold to the highest bidder, just about anything on the auction block--from diamond-studded Rolex watches and luxury cars to a 70-pound feather-plucking machine--can set off a bidding frenzy.

Just listen to auctioneer Bill Patrick on Thursday as he offered 7,440 pounds of Chinese-made women’s casual pleated pants and belts in assorted sizes and colors.

“OK, whatamIbid? WhatamIWhatamIbid?” Patrick spat out, moving an outstretched arm from side to side. “I got 11, 11, 11, 11, 11, 11, 11, 12?, 12?, 12?, I got 12, 12, 12, 12, 15, 15, 16, 16, 16, 16 . . . “

Secretive men with cellular telephones sat near the front of a warehouse in Carson, nodding their heads as they tried to outbid two men seated at the rear. Some hesitant first-timers either looked to a partner for advice or heeded a wife’s warning to drop out before the family’s savings were imperiled for forever.

Patrick spewed the numbers in rapid-fire fashion during the 10-minute battle for the pants and belts.

Some bidders, determined to win, jabbed their auction programs into the air to punctuate their bids.

“Seventeen, seventeen, seventeen, seventeen, seventeenFIVE?, seventeenFIVE?, seventeenFIVE?, seventeenFIVE! THANK YOU! Eighteen, eighteen, eighteen, eighteen?, eighteen?, EIGHTEEN!, Do I hear eighteenFIVE?, eighteenFIVE?, eighteenFIVE?, EIGHTEEN-FIVE . . . once; EIGHTEEN-FIVE . . . twice; EIGHTEEN-FIVE . . . sold!”

Bidder No. 361 won the Chinese pants and belts for $18,500.

A fellow auctioneer, one of several who would work throughout the day, nodded approvingly of Patrick’s style. He marveled at how Patrick was able to differentiate one bidder from another amid the constant raising of hands, shouts, shrieks and barely perceptible nods.

“He’s good,” the auctioneer said. “But stick around until we get up there.”

An estimated 700 people showed up Thursday for the auction staged to sell off goods confiscated from drug traffickers and violators of U.S. import laws or abandoned at the customs warehouse by someone who decided they did not want them.

All proceeds from the auction, which approached $900,000 by day’s end, go to the federal government.

The terms of the auction were simple: Goods auctioned for less than $5,000 were paid for with cash, credit cards or bank drafts on the spot. On items over that amount, 50% was due immediately, with the rest to be paid by 3 p.m. today.

Law enforcement agencies periodically hold public auctions around the country, but the Customs Service, which is part of the Treasury Department, is trying something new to entice more “small-time” buyers to participate.

For example, instead of the normal practice of auctioning 50 bicycles in a single lot, fewer bicycles were packaged together, said Josie Plachta, a spokeswoman for EG&G; Dynatrend, a Virginia firm hired by the Customs Service to conduct the auctions.

“We want to make the auctions a good experience for all bidders whether they’re small-time customers or big-time customers,” Plachta said. “We hear a lot of people complaining that they can’t compete against the commercial buyers. So we want to give individual taxpayers an opportunity to bid.”

For the most part, however, these auctions are dominated by professional buyers who can purchase large amounts of products or clothing at a drop of the hat. Many of these buyers, armed with calculators to figure out unit prices, prefer not to be identified or even talked to during the bidding. Sometimes, these men could be heard whispering among themselves in a variety of languages--among them Spanish, Arabic and Farsi.

When it came to English, they can easily shoo off the curious.

“Don’t bother me, I’m thinking,” was one buyer’s way of asking an inquisitive observer to keep his distance. After all, he was in a bidding war for 43 pounds of exquisite Iranian rugs.

He eventually gave up when the bidding reached $26,000.

“Too much for me” was his only comment.

With these multitongued high-rollers around, the bidding at times can be more confusing than frantic.

Auctioneer Ken McCormack asked for an initial bid of $1,000 for a leather briefcase equipped with an FM radio receiver.

“One, one, one, one, one,” McCormack began, “Two?, two, two?, TWO, TWO, I got TWO.”

A confused buyer near the front of the hall had to stop McCormack and admit that his bid was for only $200, not $2,000.

“Oh my God,” McCormack sighed. “OK. Attention K-Mart shoppers, I got two HUNDRED dollars. Two, two, two, two . . . “

The briefcase eventually sold for $1,300.

Here’s a small sample of what other items went for Thursday:

*Twelve Kruggerand coins, $55,000.

*An estimated 16,000 pounds of assorted fabrics, $65,500.

*A 20-pound money counter, $875.

*A diamond-studded Rolex men’s watch, $7,700.

Perhaps the strangest item on the auction block was an aluminum feather-plucking machine, apparently abandoned by a farmer who had ordered it.

“We’re all laughing about it because we want to know who would want one,” said Customs Inspector Dale Sartin.

At the end of the day, the plucker--thrown in with restaurant equipment, steel nozzles, machinery parts and parts for a deep fat fryer--was auctioned for $450.

“Weird,” Sartin said. “Just weird.”