Mistake or gold mine? I own a haunted house setup now.

So a 12x36 unit...PACKED 10 feet high completely full.

Its a complete haunted house setup. 

$50.

We went to the auctions today, and...the unit has a haunted house build in it.  No one wanted it.  Finally the auctioneer said...ok look if anyone wants it...$50.  My wife went for it. 

This is a bad sign Im thinking.  NO ONE WANTS THIS HUGE AMOUNT OF STUFF....not even for $50.

And I can kinda see why Its TONS of work.  Literally there is tons of stuff here!

BUT....Theres display cases, tables, tons of stuff we can use in the shop that I can see!  But...im going to pass because...Its just too much stuff right now.  My wife however has different ideas.

So....we own everything needed to setup a haunted house.  3,600 cubic feet of stuff!  Looking online I find a website for these things, apparently they are big business, and can go for thousands of dollars.  We moved some stuff just to try and see...and...theres a stack of wrought iron fence 10 feet high, wallboards two stacks 10' high.  A patient chair (online selling for $600 on ebay), there...well..theres literally tons of stuff.  two projector screens, and sooo much more.  but...we cant get too deep into it.  We've had to rent the unit because its just too much storage. 

We literally cannot see 2/3rds of whats in it.

Its crazy.  Soo...wifes going to try and sell it.

Outlay:  $50 to buy the unit, $310 to rent it.  I really cant see us losing money even if we part everything out.  But theres some serious value here.  And...we dont even know what 2/3rds of what is in the unit.

Some guys going to cry when he sees we paid $50 for this.

Halloween has become big business. Last year I made several hundred dollars on used costumes. Word got out that I had a large selection (scored out of a unit) and people were driving over 50 miles to see what I had. I save everything that can be used for a costume. I currently have 4 boxes in the rafters and would like to have at least double that before Halloween. I'll take Halloween over Christmas any day.

Wife found the original owner while calling around to the established haunted house businesses.  Apparently it was her fathers, he died, medical bills etc.  She offered 1K or less for it (which is probably what was owed in storage fees).  We passed.  Kinda feel for her, but theres good value here, and we have others coming out to look.  I suspect the offer was....what she has. not what its worth.  And if it was her fathers...most likely she would resell it.  Its not....Items of personal value per se.

We did learn-boxes of costumes, fog machines, laser lights, and black lights are in the back.  And more.  We have a few folks scheduling to look at it, with $3500 offers it looks like.  Even then it might be cheap for them, but.....we paid $50, plus $300 to rent the locker....sooo.....

This happens all the time. Not finding a haunted house of course, but large units that contain a lot of stuff that go dirt cheap. People just don't want to work hard or they don't want to try and find a buyer for specialty merchandise. That's where I make my money. I love buying units like this. I'll get on the phone and call potential buyers until I find someone that's interested. Then sell everything at once.

Great score Greywar!

So its sold.  All told, we spent about $300 (and some of that was a mistake thinking we were going to part it out-we ended up moving parts twice) and sold it for $1000.  This was the wifes unit so she got to make the decisions on it.  After action review...we could have gotten 1500 from the person we sold it too we think, and about 3K if we had parted it out.  Wife was just too worried about being stuck with it.  Also it was a rather...large amount of work to part it out.  Low value high volume.

So...a profit was made!

Things learned: 
Large specialty things...just rent the space and flip it, if flipping fails completely THEN move it to our shop.

You can buy a large trailer, and use that to store a immense amount of stuff for a LOT less then renting a space.

If you chip all the unwanted wood you can make some cash.

Patience can be money.

Dicker on the price more (looks at wife)  NO FEAR!

Don't bring home things that give you nightmares.  For example..that dental drill and table?  Yeah no.  The demon didn't help. 

Parting it out would have taken forever, and eventually, (if you're like me) you would have slid on your pricing to free up some space. You could have held out a bit more and probably squeaked another $500, but any time you can triple+ your investment is a good day!