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You can get really good bargains at estate auctions, too. Especially poorly attended ones. The trick is knowing what you can re-sell an item for, how to reach the people willing to pay top dollar, and being willing to do the work. It can be fun, though, if you have the time.
I look for the boxes and flats full of miscellaneous household items, tools, and decorative doodads that usually sell for a buck or two. I try to pick out one thing in the lot that's worth the purchase price to me so the rest is gravy. It seems there's a market for pretty much everything. Other than one recent sale where the only thing I bought was a bass guitar and amplifier for myself, I don't think I've attended an auction in years where I haven't made a profit.
My dads cousin has re sale buiness and goes to storage auctions all the time. 90% of the stuff in the units gets hauled to the dump.
I think if you buy units full of garbage bags that's true. If you buy units with tote bins its normaly better quality stuff. SOmeone who spends $5 or $10 on a plastic tote probably has something worthwhile to protect as opposed to throwing all your belongings in trash bags.
The unit I bougt was almost no trash. Overall thoug you are correct.
I look for the boxes and flats full of miscellaneous household items, tools, and decorative doodads that usually sell for a buck or two. I try to pick out one thing in the lot that's worth the purchase price to me so the rest is gravy. It seems there's a market for pretty much everything. Other than one recent sale where the only thing I bought was a bass guitar and amplifier for myself, I don't think I've attended an auction in years where I haven't made a profit.
yeah good strategy i was thiinking the same thing, as long as you find a few things in a unit that have value to you personally to use and you bid to that amount nad no higher you got a deal and anything else of value you can resell as y ou said is just icing on the cake. its when units start getting bid of crazy because someone sees a tv box that may or may not hold a tv or a safe that may or may not be empty that people start losing money
If someone had gotten hold of my unit they would have made some money!!
if you dont mind me asking why did you lose the unit? people are always curious and i hear people say you can't find anything good in a storage unit why wouldn't someone pay their bill.
i disagree though there's a million reasonss people lose units, people forget, fallon hard itme, etc.
When we used to do storage auctions we would sometimes really have a hard time with all the garbage. There would be mattresses, furniture, and appliances that were in terrible shape and would require us to pay to bring them to the dump. Sometimes we would have tons of garbage, other times we did pretty good. We never found anything of any real big value. One thing we found is that some of these stoage facilities would actually go through the units before the auction and take anything of any value. I don't think they are supposed to do that but I know of some that did. We were waiting once for the auction to begin and we could overhear the owner talking to an employee about the things he found in certain units and how he went through them all ahead of time. That makes me not even want to deal with those particular places at all, what's the point?
Oh no I didn't lose my unit at all. I'm just saying if something HAD happened they would have made some cash as I had some valuable paintings and a very large selection of Swarovski crystals in there.
When we used to do storage auctions we would sometimes really have a hard time with all the garbage. There would be mattresses, furniture, and appliances that were in terrible shape and would require us to pay to bring them to the dump. Sometimes we would have tons of garbage, other times we did pretty good. We never found anything of any real big value. One thing we found is that some of these stoage facilities would actually go through the units before the auction and take anything of any value. I don't think they are supposed to do that but I know of some that did. We were waiting once for the auction to begin and we could overhear the owner talking to an employee about the things he found in certain units and how he went through them all ahead of time. That makes me not even want to deal with those particular places at all, what's the point?
yeah mattresses are the worst, cant be donated because of bedbugs and othe rhealth concerns and the cost alot to throw out. alot of the regulars at storage facilities go to apartment buildings and dump in their dumpsters though your not supposed to. i find hte free section on craigslist to be good. put up a post of all the things you have and i gurantee someone will take them regardless of the quality. the beauty of this is you can even put the storage address so they come and get it from there and you dont have to drag it home just to have it moved from your house.
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I'm assuming OP meant kitchen tongs, but thanks for the chuckle. 
