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I asked the owner of our local facility about the whole auction deal. It's a pretty big place with at least 100 10x15 and bigger lockers, located in a rural, middle and working class area. She claimed that the whole TV reality version of the auction scene is a farce. They work hard at trying to get the renters to pay up, since getting at least some of the back rent, and a customer who is willing to haul their own junk back out of the unit, is always better than an auction. They have at least one auction a year, and rarely end up with big numbers on bids. For every $500-1000 bid, they have several that have no offers, and they end up hauling mostly trash to the dumpster, to get the unit cleaned up and ready to rent again. Her goal is to get the thing empty and ready to rent, at the least cost and headache. Most of the time, the answer is not an auction.
When my husband died, we had two storage rooms filled with all kinds of stuff some of it valuable including a riding lawn mower, an outdoor fountain, outdoor benches, 200 beanie babies, etc. Whoever bid on those units got themselves some nice things. Unfortunately my wedding dress was in there along with a large collection of Creative Memories stuff I had.
Losing some of my sentimental items made me realize that things are just not that important and I don't concern myself much with saving much of anything if it doesn't have a practical use.
There are plenty of articles about how storage wars is staged... in fact almost all of those supposed reality shows on all those science channels are faked in some way or another, which is why in many cases I find I can't stomach watching them. This is especially true of those ghost hunting shows.
With storage wars they plant valuable items in the lockers to make the show more interesting. In pawn stars, they just plain exaggerate the value of the items.
I'd think that the odds of finding something good/worthwhile to me would be so slim that I wouldn't bother bidding. My thought process is that most people are going to find a way to get their crap out of storage if its really, objectively valuable and you can easily realize that value.
Auctions are meant to drive the selling-price UP. Couple that fact with the trendiness of auctions via TV shows, probably not that good of a way to buy stuff anymore.
I went to an auction once. A 'friend' asked me to bid on her unit to save her stuff. I did, for $30.
When I told her I purchased the unit, she acted like she was insulted and the end result was, she refused to pay me because 'I had no right to buy her stuff'.
There were mainly clothes and personal papers inside.
The papers went to the trash as well as a lot of the clothes.
A next door neighbor went to one of those and bought a storage unit, which was full of pretty much worthless junk. She had a yard sale and sold what she could and hauled the rest to the dump. She just about broke even. She had a small loss and spent a lot of time on it. Said it was an interesting experience but she wouldn't do it again. I think she only paid $30 for the unit and didn't even get that much back.
That TV show where they buy storage units, all I see is a bunch of worthless junk, They will be going through it saying "I can get $100 for this and $40 for that, and I'm looking at the stuff an thinking "I doubt it".
People do put good stuff into storage but if the unit contains Grandma's diamond tiara and an 18th century sterling silver punch bowl set, they aren't going to abandon the unit. The abandoned units are much more likely to be the belongings of tenants who were evicted and stuff that didn't sell at someone's moving sale.
Possibly, there might be nice things in a unit that got abandoned because someone died and the heirs didn't know the unit was there or couldn't arrange to get the stored stuff, but that is going to be unusual.
The TV show the 'buyers' have someplace to 'move / Sell it' like a second hand store. So while the $100 / $40 is probably high, If they can get a larger locker for $40-50 that might clear $200-300 from it.
A next door neighbor went to one of those and bought a storage unit, which was full of pretty much worthless junk. She had a yard sale and sold what she could and hauled the rest to the dump. She just about broke even. She had a small loss and spent a lot of time on it. Said it was an interesting experience but she wouldn't do it again. I think she only paid $30 for the unit and didn't even get that much back.
That TV show where they buy storage units, all I see is a bunch of worthless junk, They will be going through it saying "I can get $100 for this and $40 for that, and I'm looking at the stuff an thinking "I doubt it".
People do put good stuff into storage but if the unit contains Grandma's diamond tiara and an 18th century sterling silver punch bowl set, they aren't going to abandon the unit. The abandoned units are much more likely to be the belongings of tenants who were evicted and stuff that didn't sell at someone's moving sale.
Possibly, there might be nice things in a unit that got abandoned because someone died and the heirs didn't know the unit was there or couldn't arrange to get the stored stuff, but that is going to be unusual.
Let's see how it all works. The storage units can be anywhere between 10′ x 5′ or 10′ x 30′. So the average storage unit is around the size of the master bedrooms. Now, let's take the average and assume that it is 20′ x 10′. In such a case, you can fit around 12-15 rooms in a storage unit. If there is enough stock of the same item and if all of it is functional, then it will surely sell. If the item is not popular, then you will have trashed that unit. That is the normal way of thinking. But, on the contrary, you can actually buy unique and antique stuff and make money out of it. Things like vintage furniture, antique look knick-knacks and the likes can be really profitable. Therefore, the storage unit can be a great place to shop for some really good antiques.
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