Anyone been to any of these?

Me and a buddy of mine are thinking of going into business together and buying some and reselling the contents.

Not going into this looking to strike it rich or find hidden treasures of gold. Just looking to mainly get furniture and stuff that we can resell on Craigslist and maybe sell all the misc items once a month at a flea market.

Basically just trying to get some extra income. And try and build up so we can get some of the more expensive lockers that tend to have better stuff in them. So dropping 300 or so and selling all the stuff off for around 600ish, or just trying to double our investment. If we get more great and if we find some valuable shit, even better.

I'm a nosy person, so looking through peoples stuff is going to be a bonus.

I have a huge garage in the house we rent so we have tons of space to store the stuff.

I understand that its not going to be easy work. From what I've read, you have to have the entire thing cleaned out in 24hrs. Most of the stuff we buy is either gonna be thrown away or donated to goodwill while we sell the main items hopefully for a profit. Anyone had any luck or been to these before?

I have a pretty good idea of what to look for when bidding on these lockers for the most part. I've watched all the shows, and done a lot of research online for tips and tricks. Definitely going in totally green though, and wouldn't be surprised if we get totally burned on a few lockers, but it will make for some nice entertainment.

3/9/2012 8:38:10 PM

You aren't going to make shit.

Go to http://www.storagetreasures.com/ , sign up, and show up. This website has basically ruined any chance you might have had at making a living as a storage hawk.

People will bid shit up like CRAZY, and you will be lucky to make 15-20% for hours and hours of work.

3/9/2012 8:42:15 PM

Yeah I figured the TV shows have basically ruined this market.

And I am probably one of the people that the regulars of these auctions hate.

A n00b with no experience showing up raining on their parade.

Thinking about hitting up some next week just go get an idea of what most of these things are going for.

3/9/2012 8:47:36 PM

I, too, watch TV.

3/9/2012 8:49:20 PM

As do I.

It just looks like it could be a fun side hobby and in the process could make some money.

I love sorting through unknown shit, and the chance to make some money is basically the driving force.

I love American Pickers. I would kill to be able to do that. However, its not practical to travel the country doing that as a college student.

So, the storage unit thing could work.

Noen have you actually been to any or know anyone who has? It seems everyone I've talked to says that I won't make any money, too many people are doing it, etc...but none of them have ever actually been or know anyone who has. Would really love some first hand accounts of what I'm getting into.

3/9/2012 8:52:58 PM

storage unit auctions are a glorified form of dumpster diving that you pay to partake in

3/9/2012 9:20:45 PM

More like a glorified form of STEALING PEOPLES SHIT. How about get a real job instead of trying tomake big off of items that rightfully belong to someone else. These people that do this are scum.

3/9/2012 9:32:56 PM

NC General Statutes disagree ^

3/9/2012 9:40:38 PM

You're a little too late. Once TV gets to anything, they ruined it. It's not a secret anymore. Tons of people have had the idea that you posed in the OP. Go ahead and try, you'll get disheartened. People that do this, do it for fun because they have love for junk. I'm not going to lie, some people can turn junk into treasure, but you have to be born with that talent.


Secondly, what they show on TV (profit wise) is fake.

Is the potential there? Yes. Realistic? No.

The likelihood of making the kind of profit and unique finds like they show on each show is slim to none.

3/9/2012 9:41:20 PM

http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-things-pawn-stars-doesnt-tell-you-about-auction-hunting/

3/9/2012 10:12:19 PM

Quote :

"More like a glorified form of STEALING PEOPLES SHIT. How about get a real job instead of trying tomake big off of items that rightfully belong to someone else. These people that do this are scum. "

Already have one. Thanks though.

And its not rightfully theirs. In the contract they sign, they agree to give up their possessions if they don't pay. Once that happens, it's no longer theirs.

^^Mainly doing it to make a little extra money, but for fun too. And to hopefully find some cool weird shit.

Like I said, I like going through other peoples shit. I'm nosy.

As long as I can break even or make a little I'm fine with it.

Not looking to strike it rich like they do on the show.

If I find something awesome thats worth a shitload, then great. If not, no biggie.

I'm not going into this expecting to quit my job, drop out of school, and make boatloads of money.

[Edited on March 9, 2012 at 10:42 PM. Reason : .,]

[Edited on March 9, 2012 at 10:59 PM. Reason : m,]

3/9/2012 10:41:53 PM

Unless theres a way to take that out of the contract, its not really a choice. Also, theres no clause about people losing their job/ability to pay. You act like people choose to not pay and have someone else buy blindly buy all of their wedding pictures and sentimental items just to throw away.

3/10/2012 12:22:03 AM

What the hell are you talking about?

3/10/2012 12:23:11 AM

you'd be better off starting a pawn shop

3/10/2012 12:57:03 AM

^^^ that's kind of a retarded stance against contract law. no one's putting a gun to someone's head and forcing them to rent a storage locker. maybe don't put valuable shit in there if there's any chance you might lose the ability to pay?

3/10/2012 9:15:19 AM

So what do people do with their stuff if they got through a natural disaster, divorce, move or foreclosure?

3/10/2012 9:47:02 AM

I'm pretty sure that according to NC Law, the storage unit place is only allowed to keep whatever they are owed in terms of past due storage fees. The rest of the money is supposed to go to the person who had their stuff auctioned off.

I've been to quite a few of these auctions, and let me tell you, you're not gonna get much of anything for $300. Even the shittiest of units go for $250-$400.

With that said, you never know and might get lucky. Good luck and maybe i'll see you out at one of these auctions.

3/10/2012 10:02:29 AM

A friend of mine got into it for a little while, and as many people have said in this thread, it wasn't worth it. His only score was a unit he bought that ended up having a set of 4 22" chrome rims. Other than that, typically all he found was a bunch of porn.

3/10/2012 10:10:28 AM

Quote :

"Auction Lesson #4: Sex Dungeons The third auction I attended was a smaller one I found on Craigslist, and consequently sparsely attended. Only myself and one other hunter arrived, Ed, who'd I seen hate me at other auctions. I gave him a friendly nod. He ignored me a little less hatefully than before. So: some progress. We stood standing on the threshold of the only storage unit up for bids. "What's that in the back?" I asked, standing up on tip toes. Ed, who had been looking around warily the whole time, craned his neck to look. "Dunno," he said, biting his lip. "Oh shit!" he added, as we both heard footsteps behind us. Before I could see who was coming, I was shoved to the floor of the locker, Ed stumbling to the ground beside me. The shutter doors slammed down, sending us in to darkness. "Ahh dammit." Ed's voice somewhere beside me in the blackness. His face lit up as he illuminated it with his cell phone. "No reception." "What? What's happening?" I asked, my voice a little more cartoonish than I would have liked. "Fucking Craigslist," Ed said. He bit his lip. "It's another damned sex trap." "A what?" "A sex dungeon." "You say that like it's a thing. It cannot be a thing. Please tell me this isn't a thing." "Relax newb. You're an auction hunter now. Gotta roll with the big boys." "This has happened to you before?" "I'd say about one time in ten these auctions turn out to be sex dungeons, yeah." Ed shrugged. "Lotta lonely dudes operate these storage facilities." "And how long have you been doing this?" "About 20 years." "And you hit what, one-two of these auctions each week?" "About that." I did the math. "You've chosen a career where you're getting raped 5-10 times a year in corrugated steel buildings?" "I guess when you put it that way it sounds like a lot." "I could put it a lot of ways and it would sound like a lot." I stood up and tried to move towards the door, stumbling over something. "Calm down. I'd suggest you just try and enjoy it. You need to roll with life's little ups and downs a little, newb." "You mean you just let them sex dungeon you? This is one hell of a down to roll with." I found the door and began searching it, looking for a release or something. Behind me I could hear Ed banging around, the dim light from his cell phone casting eerie shadows. "Found em," he said. "You found what?" I asked, turning around. Something black and strappy came flying through the air and hit me in the face. I caught it before it could reach the floor. "What is this?" "Ball gag. Put it on." "Ed, do you think you might be giving in to this a little too easily?" "Mmmmmeghghmph." The problem is not that I don't know where it's been. The problem is that I do know where it's been. On the other side of the door, I could hear footsteps. "I hope you guys er ready!" A click, and the door rumbled upwards, a spreading sea of light silhouetting our sex-captor. "Bam! Mouth-Punch!" I said, doing just that as I ran past the villain. He fell to the ground, and I stopped a few yards away. It felt a bit too easy. Although I've often told people that I have "the eyes of a Van Damme" I can't say the same for my arms or chest or any other parts of me. How did I escape from this sex dungeon so easily? "Ow! That really hurt!" my prospective rapist said from the ground, rubbing his jaw. He was the owner of the storage complex, a sweaty man, with the name Daryl stenciled across the breast of his shirt. "Then I did it right." "I don't understand," Daryl said, looking hurt. "I tried to explain things to him," Ed said, emerging from the locker, his ball gag hanging around his neck. He shook his head. "Fucking newbs." "Get the hell out of here you fucking newb," Daryl said, standing up. "It's all money, money, money with you, isn't it, never sex, no, its never dirty clutching sex. We got no need for your ivory-tower sorts 'round these here storage facilities." "How about the police? You got need for the police round here?" Daryl looked worried. "You wouldn't." He was right, I wouldn't. I went through a bit of a crying wolf spell a few years earlier, claiming outlandish crimes were occurring and seeing what happened. Regicide, that kind of thing. Now I need my parents permission to call the police. Wordlessly, I left the strange storage folk, letting them stew in fear for awhile, before they got around to stewing in other, worse things. Read more: 5 Things 'Pawn Stars' Doesn't Tell You About Auction Hunting | Cracked.com http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-things-pawn-stars-doesnt-tell-you-about-auction-hunting_p2/#ixzz1oj9sMixE "

3/10/2012 10:16:07 AM

you'd be better off starting a pawn shop hunting alligators

3/10/2012 10:24:50 AM

Instead of listening to everyone on here how about go to one of these auctions, buy a pile of trash, have oh so much fun being nosey and rummaging through other peoples stuff, and then realize you aren't going to make jack shit

Report back after, I would love to hear how it was.

3/10/2012 11:11:34 AM

yeah, you gotta come up with these idears BEFORE they show up on tv

3/10/2012 11:16:11 AM

The problem with shows like Storage Wars is that they only show you the success stories. They make it look like these guys make tons of money at every auction, and do so by only buying 1 unit. What they don't show you is the 100s of other units they have bought and lost money on.

3/10/2012 12:28:53 PM

i know they say they don't do this, but i'm pretty convinced the network is planting items in those lockers. if they aren't, they must be filming a TON of auctions, because like ^ said, most of those things are filled with junk.

3/10/2012 1:42:18 PM

The only way to make any money doing this is if you own a thrift store or sell at flea markets. At that point you are only using the auctions as a cheap way to attain inventory. You have to have a means to sell every single thing you find, and even then it is hardly worth the effort that goes into it. If you are getting into storage unit auctions looking to find that 1 item that will make you $thousands, then you are better off playing the lottery.

[Edited on March 10, 2012 at 1:50 PM. Reason : a]

3/10/2012 1:46:37 PM

Quote :

"The problem with shows like Storage Wars is that they only show you the success stories. They make it look like these guys make tons of money at every auction, and do so by only buying 1 unit. What they don't show you is the 100s of other units they have bought and lost money on."

No the problem with these shows is that they plant unique items that would never be left in a storage shed.

This is how they do it:


The show finds a local pawn shop.
The show asks to borrow their most valuable item.
The show plants the item in the storage unit.
The auction hunters pretend to win "a shitty" unit... when ALL OF A SUDDEN!... JACKPOT!!
The show/auction hunter then returns the item to the local pawn shop (where they miraculously find an instant buyer for a small collector's base item to pay TOP price)

The pawn shop tells the viewers everything they need to know about the item like they were an expert on the subject (without having ever seen the item before) and tells the auctions hunters that it's valued at $100,000. Then proceed to offer the auction hunters $10,000

Everyone knows in real life, as a buy, you withhold the real value of an item and under report it. If I know it was $100,000 and the other person didn't know shit about it, I would claim it's trash and only worth $100. Then I would proceed and steal the item for $50, not $10,000.

What does the pawn shop get?
The pawn shop gets on TV for free publicity.
As a BONUS when naive people check to see if the pawn shop is real, they will see that the shop is, indeed, real, and conclude falsely that the show must be real.

[Edited on March 10, 2012 at 2:32 PM. Reason : .]

3/10/2012 2:30:29 PM

At some point you would expect one of the other 50 people that stand around on the show to win an auction. Or even place a bid. or do something.

3/10/2012 4:17:26 PM

is this auction hunters or a Criss Angel show?

3/10/2012 5:31:12 PM

^^ They do. But they edit it to where you only see the main people.

Once again, not going into this expecting to find hidden treasures. Just mainly looking to get some inventory to sell on Craigslist and at flea markets.

I have no doubt that the shows plant valuables to make it more interesting. But not geting into this expecting it to be anywhere near what we see on the shows.

3/10/2012 7:34:49 PM

It's easier to start a business where customers come to you while you stay in one place

than it is to buy a bunch of random things to pursue a buyer for each item.


In other words, finding 1,000,000 customers to sell them 1,000,000 items is a lot harder than 1,000,000 coming to you to buy 1,000,000 items.

3/10/2012 8:26:25 PM

Occasionally people who do this will bring me books or records. Nothing they've ever brought is even worth a buck a piece, let alone good money.

3/10/2012 8:54:39 PM

^^I basically plan on buying mostly furniture and household furninshings and sell them on Craigslist.

I have the room to stock pile most of what I plan on buying. It doesn't take a lot of effort to list the stuff on Craigslist. Sure, its probably going to get annoying having to deal with people by going that route, but it something I'm prepared to do. The smaller items I will sell at the flea market once a month or so.

I did a test run and went into a random city on CL and copied pictures of a bunch of random items, couches, chest of drawers, dressers, old TVs, etc...Mainly the stuff I anticipate being in the units I hope to buy, and put ads on CL in Raleigh to see what the demand was for these random items. Every item I listed had at least 6+ people inquiring about it. Most of the dressers had 10+ with a few wanting to come get it right away. I just texted or emailed them back that it had already been sold. Hell, an old 27in TV I listed for $20 had 7 people texting me about it.

Like I said, I did this just to get an idea about the demand of these items before I actually buy anything. If I had listed all of this stuff, and basically gotten no hits, then I would seriously consider not even doing this, but based on the test run of the stuff I listed, there is demand.

For anyone interested, here is a forum where people post about their experiences buying lockers. Is pretty interesting and more along the lines of what I'm expecting I guess. It seems a lot of you have opinions or thoughts about the subject without any real experiences.

http://storageauctionforums.com/index.php?board=10.0

3/11/2012 12:20:37 AM

Quote :

"So what do people do with their stuff if they got through a natural disaster, divorce, move or foreclosure?"

sure they might require one, but that doesn't mean the storage unit people are running a charity either. if you sign on the dotted line, you should know what the expectations are

3/11/2012 9:31:13 AM

^^ I'm not saying you can't make a few bucks doing it, but you need to factor in the time aspect. If you are just looking to make some extra money on the side, then you will probably be pleased with your results. If you are looking to make a living at it, then you better be prepared to put in the same hours/effort (and probably more) that you would at a regular full-time job.

[Edited on March 11, 2012 at 10:35 AM. Reason : a]

3/11/2012 10:35:18 AM

Yeah not looking at this as a full time job. Just something on the side to make some extra bucks and to get out and do something. I know it will probably be time consuming, but it'll be as much time as I want to put in it. And its not like there a lot of risks like starting up a company or anything. I basically can only loose the money I spend on the lockers and gas. Its not like we are signing a lease on a store and are gonna have employees to pay, and utilities or a loan.

We are both gonna start with 1500$ and see what we can do. If we lose it all, oh well. But I'm sure we're probably gonna game some fun and hard work in store no matter what.

3/11/2012 11:47:09 AM

Yeah, you can definitely get some deals if you're looking to buy units full of mattresses. 50% of the units i've seen auctioned off around here have been full of mattresses.

3/11/2012 2:08:09 PM

The biggest problem I've had are the damn auction times. They are always some weird shit like 2pm on a Tuesday, when there's no way I can get away from work.

3/11/2012 3:15:31 PM

Wow what a great idea, sounds easy and profitable, I think I'll try it too!

3/11/2012 3:46:01 PM

I think the problem with a lot of people is that they have the same outlook as you without any actual real experience dealing with the subject at hand.

You just know that there are some TV shows dealing with it, and that it's probably a played out idea and there is no way in hell anyone can make any money doing it.

When in fact, you have no clue what you're talking about and are just making assumptions.


After talking to some people who have actually done this, and reading in some forums on the internet, and the few actual posts in this thread from people who know people or have done some of this, there is obviously some money to be made as long as you have a good grasp of how to operate and what to do. Like I said, not doing this to get rich, and I don't expect it to be easy, but the realistic potential to make some money is definitely there.

You are entitled to your opinion, but don't come into a thread being a complete douche and spitting out dribble on something you know nothing about.

It might not be "easy" but that depends a lot on what ones definition of "easy" is.

And plenty of people, while not striking it rich, do in fact turn profits.

This isn't going to be a full time job, just more of a hobby with the benefit of making some money.

I also like to collect weird and strange stuff, so I'm sure we will be coming across a lot of that stuff too.

[Edited on March 11, 2012 at 4:33 PM. Reason : .]

3/11/2012 4:31:49 PM

Here's a tip for you if you do succeed:

Don't put over $5,000 of unreported income in your bank account.

Keep that shit in monopoly money if you're doing what I think you're doing.

[Edited on March 11, 2012 at 4:44 PM. Reason : .]

3/11/2012 4:35:53 PM

Yeah all the cash from and for operations will be kept out of any bank accounts. Especially since these things only take payment in cash.

3/11/2012 4:39:29 PM

Yeah all the monopoly money from and for operations will be kept out of any bank accounts. Especially since these things don't take payment in monopoly money.



ftfy

3/11/2012 4:43:51 PM

Actually tacolu I have been buying and reselling for almost 15 years and currently attend two auctions a week on average. Been doing this professionally for almost 5 years and even still I consider myself a beginner. I don't need to tell you that what you see on TV is NOT an accurate portrayal of the "industry" but I will tell you that the fastest way to tell if your new hobby is a worthwhile one is to go all in and see for yourself. Might I ask what it is that you do for a living currently?

3/11/2012 7:27:33 PM

haha

3/11/2012 8:16:12 PM

Had auctions today in Wake and Durham counties, where were you tacolu? Tomorrow is a big day, will we see you chasing the dream???

3/13/2012 8:23:13 PM

I'm really not interested in anything you have to say.

Go troll another thread.

3/13/2012 11:48:27 PM

I was legitimately trying to be helpful, but whatever buddy. You will figure out pretty quickly that it is smart to take all the help you can get, and that very few of the veterans will be willing to do that much. Have it your way, the hard way

3/14/2012 8:33:04 AM

YUUUUUUUUUUP!

3/14/2012 9:24:00 AM

Quote :

"Everyone knows in real life, as a buy, you withhold the real value of an item and under report it. If I know it was $100,000 and the other person didn't know shit about it, I would claim it's trash and only worth $100. Then I would proceed and steal the item for $50, not $10,000."

Hello fraud.

3/14/2012 3:19:31 PM

I don't think that's fraud. If you and I both agree on the price for me to buy an item from you, I don't see anything illegal about that.

3/14/2012 3:57:30 PM