Arizona auctioning off shipping containers formerly used as border 'wall'

If you’ve been waiting for your chance to buy a 40-foot shipping container with a bit of international history and intrigue, your chance is coming this month.

The first of a likely series of online auctions begins Oct. 16, where five of the containers that were removed earlier this year from the Arizona-Mexico border are up for grabs. Two of the “lots’’ will each be for a single container, with a minimum $2,000 bid; the third will be for three containers, starting at $6,000.

But you need to hurry if you want to be the first on your block to have one.

The Arizona Department of Administration requires would-be bidders to register at least seven days before they can make an offer, meaning by Monday. That allows the department to verify identity to protect against the use of stolen identities to make purchases, said spokeswoman Megan Rose.

Once you’re registered, though, there’s no immediate rush as occurs at an in-person auction.

Bids are taken online for 14 days. You can see on the website what is the highest bid so far.

You can also put in a “proxy bid,’’ the maximum amount you’re willing to pay, so you don’t have to keep logging in to see if someone has outbid you.

If the last bid when the auction closes is below your maximum, you’ll only be charged the amount of that last bid plus some yet-to-be-determined small addition to make you the high bidder.

Plus 6.3% sales tax.

Photos of the containers are available on the website. So when you bid, you will know whether you are getting a red one, a white one, a blue one or some other color.

But beyond that, you won’t actually be able to see what you’re bidding on until it’s yours.

What the state is disclosing is that the containers have been heavily used and “likely have noticeable dents and cracks.’’ The only guarantee is that each has operable doors, a roof and a floor.

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The best of these already are gone. Other government agencies and nonprofits were given first crack. Rose said the ones in better condition were snapped up, as were all the 20-foot containers.

If you still want one and do win, you’ll have seven days to pay up. Credit cards are accepted.

But you’ve also got to haul it off yourself within 30 days — or, presumably, hire a professional hauler, as the containers don’t have wheels — from the Arizona prison complex in Tucson where they are stored.

If you don’t win within the first round, a second batch of five containers — two singles and a lot of three, like the first time — begins after the first auction is ended, Rose said. The same rules and 14-day window apply.

Given that the state has about 2,000 of the containers to sell, it could take several more rounds of auctions, and several months, before they all are gone.

But Rose said if interest flags, the number of containers being offered every 14 days is likely to increase, a move that might attract more interest from large commercial buyers.

The containers come with a story.

It goes back to early 2001 when newly elected President Joe Biden canceled further installation of border barriers ordered by his predecessor, Donald Trump. That provoked a fight with then Gov. Doug Ducey, whose administration eventually gave a $95 million no-bid contract to AshBritt Management & Logistics to obtain and install a double-high barrier of shipping containers along a 10-mile stretch of the international border in Coronado National Forest.

When the Forest Service objected, Ducey filed suit asking a federal judge to declare that Arizona could install the containers even though they were on a 60-foot-wide strip the U.S. government claims as its own. The federal agency responded with its own lawsuit.

Ducey eventually issued another contract for $66 million, also to AshBritt, to tear down the ersatz wall and transport the containers to the Tucson prison site where they now stand.

Gov. Katie Hobbs agreed to a final deal that ended the litigation, with the state paying another $2.1 million to restore the border area to the way it was before the containers went up, including reseeding all 40 acres of disturbed area and performing invasive species treatment and monitoring for three years.