The hostility is because these bulk auctions requiring committing lots of money and time,truck pickup effectively shut out 99.99% of prospective buyers!
Just like the Cincinnati Public Schools computer auction of some years ago where the Commodore and Apple systems were sold only as huge lots of "keyboards"(really the cpus, disk drives, and monitors SEPERATELY.
The only people that wanted OR knew what the items were had neither the money or storage to buy three seperate job lots of say a 100 pieces each in order to put together systems.Oh yes, the various cables were tossed in yet another "lot".
So the school system ended up PAYING for dumpsters and labor to throw away those C64s and Apples,
MANY students,parents,or members of the public would have bought a complete set or two .
Such bulk auctions are a way for administrators to claim they are recovering value from ex-School(government)(institutional) assests when they simply want it gone and consider the items worthless trash.Similar auctions dispose of many other items from cars to fence posts and most is sold for a fraction of true value to scrap dealers.I know of an old radio engineer's estate that was mis-handled the same way ,and tens of thousands of dollars in test equipment sold as a truckload lot for scrap metal!!!