Advice on Auction Situation

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We had an interesting situation come up and I wanted to get some advice from the BP community. We were looking at a property that was listed a month or so ago on the MLS for about 150k, which was overpriced and the numbers did not work well for cash flow. Once the listing was removed I was in contact with the owner to get some more information about the property and to see if he still had interest in selling, which he did, but would not budge from his original asking price. I happened to check the sheriff sales page today for our county and the property was recently listed for auction at a fairly discounted minimum bid. My question is, what's the best way to go about trying to obtain the property? Would it be beneficial to re-contact the owner to see what he would sell it for now, or is it out of his hands and into the banks (and now a short sale), or should we wait until the sheriff sale if the property isn't withdrawn?