How successful have your “partnerships” with other buyers been?

Never had a storage auction business partner myself but I've seen a few of them have some bad experiences with each other...more often than not that seems to be the case.

You?

I've tried partnerships with a couple of other buyers but they never really panned out. One guy wasn't making enough money with our arrangement and the other guy left the resale scene and went back to his former career field.

For the most part the old timers don't want anything to do with partnerships (maybe cause to them I'm still a newbie) and the newbies who have come in to the scene after me come and go so quickly there is really no time to create a relationship.

Pretty much left to buying and selling or trading pieces from other buyers and if I see one of the old regulars who depends on auctions for thier livelyhood bidding on a unit, I won't jump in. That's the extent of partnerships for me.

I know one of the old timers use to have a partner.  I think over time one or the other just gets tired of doing it and quits.

I've not really had a partner but I have split a few units with one of my buddies.  Most of the time I've already bought the unit.  I then give him a call if he isn't already at the auction and say I have this unit, this price paid so 1/2 that, want in?  He was "part owner" at my other buddies store.  We would sell everything in the unit at the store and split profit.  If we wanted to keep something for ourselves we had to both agree.  Worked pretty well but he has now quit the store / auctions.

I've split a few other unit cost on specific units.  Normally it's I want only x,y,z items or vice versa.  I get help cleaning unit, get what I want, rest goes to other guy.  Or the flip of that where they get what item(s) they wanted specificly and help me clean unit, with everything else going to me.  Lower cost of items for labor equity so to speak.

It always seems that anyone that wants to be my partner wants 50% of the money for doing 10% of the work. I handle all my own stuff for that very reason...

There's a group of people at our local auctions who are all friendly with each other, I think 2 of them are partners. But it seems like they're all in it together. They don't bid each other up, they rarely even bid against each other. After they look at the lockers, they all get in their group and discuss and typically one guy from that group will come out bidding.

They win a majority of the lockers.. But in my view they typically overpay. They keep coming, so I guess they're doing something right.

i once teamed up with a guy on a unit neither of us could pass up but neither had cash for on our own. it worked out okay. overall though i dont like hsaring my profits and its too tough trying to decide how to divide up items or divide up cash when some items take  months to sell