According to Mary Celentanti, unclaimed property director for the state treasury department, the auction consists of items from abandoned safety deposit boxes.,”The Wisconsin State Treasury Department is auctioning off $30,000 worth of unclaimed property in its first of a series of online auctions.

According to Mary Celentanti, unclaimed property director for the state treasury department, the auction consists of items from abandoned safety deposit boxes. The auction began Sept. 29 and ends Friday.

According to Celentanti, in order for the state treasury department to auction these items off the bank must first drill into the safety deposit boxes in which the owners failed to pay rent on. The bank then holds these items for five years for the owners. Once those five years are up the department then takes the items that are still unclaimed and holds them for another two years before choosing what to auction off on the Wisconsin Surplus Web site.

Items from this auction include Harley Davidson key chains, Tiffany gold buttons in the original box and a journal written in the 1800s by a Wisconsin woman.

Celentanti said items with no commercial value, such as birth certificates and paperwork, are kept at the state treasury department office for three years and then destroyed.

Though the state treasury has been auctioning off unclaimed property in traditional, physical auctions for years this is the first online auction the Wisconsin state treasury has ever held. In doing so, Celentanti said the hope is that this will make the auction available to a wider range of people, as compared to a traditional auction held in only one Wisconsin city.

"We chose an online auction because we wanted to get in with the times, and provide a much larger, international market for the auction," Celentanti said.

"The online auction gives more people the opportunity to bid from the comfort of their own home," said Sarah Vance, staff coordinator of safe keeping for the state treasury department.

According to Celentanti, online auctions are also more cost effective than traditional auctions, because they do not have the staff or moving costs of traditional auctions.

Also, other states have already moved to online auctions of unclaimed property as opposed to traditional physical auctions.

"States such as Colorado and Pennsylvania have already held online auctions of unclaimed property, many states use eBay to run their auctions," Vance said.

According to Celentanti, the state treasury department plans to hold a new online auction every other week, with 20 to 30 items per auction.

This auction is at www.wisconsinsurplus.com. According to Matthew Lust, co-owner of the Web site, this site is open not only to the state treasury department, but all Wisconsin municipalities. Lust also said that anything with monetary value can be auctioned off on the Web site.

"Some items in the state treasury auction are coins, stamps, silverware, jewelry and baseball cards," Lust said.

According to Celentanti all the proceeds from the auction will be kept for the owners of the unclaimed property or their heirs, and will always be available for them. The interest from the auctioned property will go to pay the bank for the rent on the safety deposit boxes and to fund the state treasury department office.

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