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Depending on how big the auction was, I doubt his poor condition would have been caused by having no water while in a sale box. Since the boxes are tipped around a bit at an auction, theres no way I would be able to keep the water from spilling and making a mess of the bird I am trying to sell. His poor condition was probably from wherever he came from before the auction.
Many people catch birds the night before a sale, so it ends up being a lot longer than a couple of hours without water. While a person has a choice about drinking or not, the birds cannot choose, but any time I pour water in the cups, at least one comes over to have a drink. Water runs off their feathers, and even a whole cup is not going to wet them significantly.
Another issue is cages without bedding. I can't count how many times I have seen chickens with injured toes in cages because no one bothered to put bedding in. Let's just try to do the best we can for our birds.
I use cardboard boxes which would fall apart if they got soaken wet. The boxes at auctions are not very large so the birds would be sitting in water and wet shavings until they got to their new home.
I catch my birds the night before, box them and take them in the morning. It would be about 24 hours at the most that they would be without water.