FORT WAYNE - One of my favorite websites is the Indiana attorney general's unclaimed money page.
From time to time I go to the site and type in my name, but I've come away disappointed every time.
The same website's unclaimed property auction, though, was always a pleasant diversion.
Every year, the attorney generals office receives the contents of hundreds of safe deposit boxes that have been abandoned or forgotten. The boxes often contain apparently worthless items - plastic cups, outdated documents, love letters, even old teeth. But they also contain lots of other things - watches, jewelry, coins, stamps, dolls and other doodads that appear to have some value.
Time was, the attorney general would periodically conduct one big auction at the Indiana State Fairgrounds and sell off everything at once, holding the proceeds for owners if they ever appear. But auctions like that seriously limited the number of people who could take part.
A few years ago the office decided to go the route of many other states and start auctioning items on eBay, making it possible for almost everyone to see what Hoosiers had left behind.
Occasionally, a bargain could be found. Becky Yuan, the attorney generals office's director of unclaimed property, recalls one platinum watch coated in baguette diamonds appraised for $10,000. It sold for $2,000.
In the last year or so, though, if you were to click on the unclaimed property auction link, nothing happened.
So I called the attorney general's office. Have you stopped auctioning property?
Well, Yuan said, though the office is required to put items up for sale every three years, the auctions have been on a temporary hiatus.
It's all because of changes in eBay policies.
One change required the attorney general to use a list of pre-approved appraisers chosen by eBay.
Appraisers?
"If you say something is gold, it better be gold," Yuan said. "If you say something is a diamond, it better be a diamond. If you have a signed Michael Jordan card, you have to authenticate the signature."
So the office used local experts to get expert descriptions of what it was selling.
Now eBay wants to funnel all business to its own chosen experts.
"We cant do that if we have to use Indiana companies," Yuan said.
"And its cost-prohibitive," Yuan said. Appraisers dont work for free. To have an item inspected involved sending it to the appraiser, paying for the service and then possibly finding out an item is virtually worthless.
"Its quite expensive, Yuan said. "They take a chunk off the top and a chunk off the end, and were eating all the costs."
EBay also changed the way people could pay for items.
"We used to only take checks, money orders or certified checks," Yuan said. Now they had to use PayPal, which created a conflict because the attorney general deals with consumer complaints about the company.
PayPal also created other headaches. All items were sold as-is, but people would buy items and then, in a case of buyer's remorse, demand a refund and automatically get it.
Why, I asked, doesnt the attorney general just link up with other attorneys general and establish their own unclaimed property site? Every state has unclaimed funds and unclaimed property.
It's a great idea, Yuan said, and they've tried to get various states to cooperate, but every state is different. Indiana uses the attorney general to handle unclaimed property. Another state might use its department of revenue, and another might use the office of the comptroller.
"Every state has a different inventory system," Yuan said. "On the surface it seems very uniform," but in fact various state policies are all over the place.
For now, the attorney general's office is pondering other sites to hold auctions. "If eBay wants to step up and go by our terms, great, but so far they havent done that," Yuan said.
"There are a lot of auction sites," Yuan says.
The office hopes to resume auctions by the end of the year.
