Last Wednesday I decided to head to the car auction in Ardiya. They were auctioning the 60+ cars I posted about earlier that week which were confiscated from one guy. Many of the cars were now classics and so I went with a friend who was interested in one of the cars so we could try and bid on it. The experience was pretty interesting to say the least.
This must have been the most popular car auction ever held in Kuwait due to all the hype built up around the cars. I’d guess 99% of the people there, and there were A LOT of people, had never been to an auction before including myself. Due to the number of people they were expecting to show up, a makeshift setup was put together across the street in an empty lot.
The auction was meant to start at 3PM but ended up starting shortly after 3:30PM. Basic rules were announced at the start, if you win a bid you must come up to the front and give them your civil ID card. You then get it back once you pay for the item. You need to pay on the spot. Knet only, no cash. Pretty simple although no idea how you can pay KD30,000 for a Ferrari Testarossa on your Knet card since I thought there was a 10,000KD limit? No idea.
The whole experience was really casual. The cars weren’t there, so if you hadn’t seen them last weekend in person at the police lot and noted down details like the license plate number, then you were pretty much screwed. There was just a list to go by which you had to print out yourself from their Instagram account or just keep looking at your phone. Most of the items on the list were misspelled and many lacked any details. For example, there were three BMW 8-series for sale and the only way to tell them apart on the list was with their license plate number. So if you hadn’t written down their plate numbers when checking the car out you were out of luck.
The auction moved fairly quickly but because we were right next to the mosque they had to stop twice for a prayer break. Not sure if that’s what they usually do or if they had to do it because we were right outside the mosque and the mosques speakers were louder than the auctions. By 7PM we had gone through two pages worth of cars and it was getting pretty chilly. There were no outdoor lights so the auction turned into a moonlight auction. The majority of the people must have been there for the two Ferraris since most of them left once they were sold. By the time I left only the first few rows of seats were filled.
My friend didn’t win the car, he was interested in a Volvo which he was willing to pay up to 2,000 for but it ended up going for 2,700. I had my eye on a 1997 Alfa Romeo Spider but I wasn’t going to pay over 250KD for it and the car ended up going for 350. Overall I had a good time, it was an interesting experience for sure.
If you ever want to go to a car auction you can find out about upcoming ones on the Instagram account @mzadmoj. The location of the auction is at the Deposit Reserve and Judicial Arbitration Sector Building in Ardiya, here is the location on Google Maps. They usually have the cars on display there it’s just this specific time that things were a bit different due to the circumstances. Let me know if you have any questions below.
