Yea....like russian roulette, the lottery, a dare, rock paper scissors, a coin toss, and every other kind of wager/bet/gamble mixed together...it makes me want to try it though, because it would be cool to find some good stuff...but all the garbage makes it not worth it...
Once the property is unclaimed, doesn't the owner of the storage unit become the owner of the property? Why wouldn't the owner of the storage unit go through what was there, first, before auctioning it off? I would think that would lessen your chances even further of ever finding anything at one of these places. They're at least going to take 30 minutes to scan over everything and pull what they want.
I saw one and the high roller purchased a unit for around 2k. His workers unloaded it and at the end of the show they should he made a profit of 2k - mostly off some baseball cards. Now if you watched he had 5 or 6 help him unload and sort it. Then figure in his overhead for those big trucks and the store - I bet he lost money. I also wonder how many units they go thru before they find ones they can record.
It's an interesting show in a Pawn Stars sort of way. I'm starting to get to know the characters, but it's a TV show. A midget with nigh vision goggles? Puhleeze. I go to a resell shop all the time where the owner gets a lot of stuff from these auctions. He says anywhere in the Chicagoland area it's always the same group of buyers.
My cousin and uncle own two of the largest storage facilities in our area and have these auctions all the time. The question answers itself really....as we all know, 99% of these things are full of junk. So the facility owners know they can either open and try to sell themselves a unit of junk for next to nothing, or auction it off for probably five times more than if they had not auctioned it off. Sometimes there's a real find in them, but thats the exception, not the rule. Guy
They would be similar to landlords who get stuck with the contents of apartments and houses when tenants abandon them. They can't be bothered sorting through the junk to look for anything of value. I used to live in a neighborhood where a lot of the evicted tenants' stuff was just piled in dumpsters. I hauled a lot of decent stuff from them and sold it to second hand shops. Everything from lamps, furniture to stereos and tvs.
Gotcha. I thought 'wgpjr' was a acronym for something and that you were saying the show was "too wgpjr". I'll slither away now.
Personally i don,t think those finds are even close to the norm!! I,am sure they have already Been gone through by the property owners and cherry picked and then put up for auction Again it look,s very much staged just like pawn stars i guess it,s time to find another expert ....LOL
What's to keep the storage owner from cutting the lock, picking out the good stuff, and putting another lock on it? Or better yet, the storage owner could clean out his basement, throw everything in a locker, and sell the junk.
No worries Hobo. I'm sure this show is exactly like pawn stars...I mean they can't show every locker they open, they probably only show the good and some of the bad...and I'm sure the units have been either picked over or "selected" for the show...notice how they only usually show they 4 or so guys bidding...
A friend used to buy these units regularily, but never for more than a couple of hundred. He sold the used clothing at a swap meet and used to it to keep his sons busy. But he never told me of a single instance where he hade some treasure find and I find a storage crate full of a Silver coin collection with cans and jars of Silver quarters & halves, proof and mint sets, etc almost beyond belief. I just cant buy it.
Well this show does take place in California (I think it's Cali, may be confusing it with the other storage auction show...lol), so I would think finding "treasure" would happen more often out there than say in the midwest, etc... But yeah, I'm sure they film hundreds of auctions and only the best ones are edited into the show. Otherwise it'd get rather boring.
You have to look at it like this would you store something of great value in a storage unit and Not pay the monthly rent , That to me just sounds stupid!!
