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One of the best-kept secrets of commerce is the government auction. The government often seizes property and merchandise from criminals who obtained the items with ill-gotten funds. It might be police, the IRS, Customs or the DEA that confiscates the merchandise. The government then holds public auctions to divest itself of it and convert it into cash, which can be used to prosecute the offenders or to repay the victims.

Many people who frequent these auctions have bought new cars for mere hundreds of dollars, or other valuable merchandise at a fraction of the usual cost. The only trick is finding out where and when these auctions are.

Like most things, the information is available on the Internet. However, you must beware: Many sites claiming to give you access to vast, comprehensive lists of every upcoming government auction are scams, taking your $39.99 and giving you a lot of worthless Web site links in return. On oltiby.com, all public or government auction are free listing, free bidding.

The fact is, there's no reason to pay ANYTHING to find your nearest, soonest government auction. The government wants you to buy the merchandise; hence, they make auction information readily available. The U.S. Treasury has a Web site (http://www.treas.gov/auctions/) that has links to various categories of auctions. In general, if the Web site address has .gov in it, it's an official government site and will provide reliable, free information about auctions.

The U.S. government even sponsors some auctions online, through the site gsaauctions.gov. It's not as streamlined as eBay, but it allows you to bid on items without being present at the public auctions. If something large like a house, boat or car is what you're looking for, a government sale could prove to be one of the cheapest ways to get it.