Good luck

Our pss in ny changed where they post them to make them harder to find.  The easiest way to find them will be either storage treasures or storageunitauctionlist ... This one is $ per month. 

I'm going to my first one in July in NJ.  Auction scene has been dead in Long Island/New York area.  Locker counts are much lower and the ones that do go off are often total junkers.

I am interested in checking out one of the sea port giant shipping container auctions but info is few and far between

After buying hundreds of units over the last several years I have definitely been victim of a few staged ones but even I can't feel bad for these people.  Spending 1650 of inherited money on their "jackpot" unit filled with scrap and mislabeled boxes is just plain dumb. 

And if the owner of the facility actually meant that people snuck into his building with the refrigerator washer dryer motorbike etc. He is as dumb as he is crooked.  I'm hoping what he meant was that someone bought a unit and then threw their garbage into one of his empty ones that's much more believable as I've seen it done before.

Daddy old money had me cracking up

I've done a fair bit of research on this and here is how it plays out for New York.

As there are no federal agencies overseeing auctions it falls to the state.  In New York they have adopted the UCC which basically states that as long as something is disclosed, in whatever fashion the facility/auctioneer see fit, it is legal.

For example if, in the verbal Terms and Conditions at the beginning of the sale they state that:
1. Auctioneer has the right to bid
2. Auctioneer has the right to bid by assignment
3. Individual items have been lotted for sale (or something to that affect)

What this allows them to do is have "shill" bidders
and
Sell items in a unit that were placed there by the facility.

Legally.  Disclose is the key word.

Now if you were to call foul and state that it was a staged unit all they have to say is that you didn't hear it in the terms and conditions.  You of course would say they didn't mention it, they would counter and at the end of the day the burden would be on you.

Its a house run game

STORY: A regular in my circuit bought a unit from PS about 6 months ago.  When he went in to pay the tenant was there waiting.  She didn't have enough money to pay the balance and reclaim her unit so she asked the guy to repurchase a couple of things (price per item to be determined once he opened the door and of course she didn't tell him what she wanted).

They get to the locker, he opens it (for the first time since purchase) and she immediately goes right to the back corner.  She comes back in a couple of minutes and says "where is my fathers coin collection and my grandfathers gun"?  He says I have no idea what you are talking about this is my first time in the unit.  They both went and complained to the manager that obviously one of the employees went through the unit prior to auction.

The manager shrugged it off, he emptied out the unit and she went home empty handed.

This story obviously does not relate to my response about staged units but its to demonstrate that we are at the mercy of the employees and you just have to know the facility's rep and bid accordingly.

We were at an extra space about a year ago doing our preview and the manager saw a locker across the hall without a lock.  He walked over to it and opened the door and there was a guy no shirt just boxers on sitting in a lazy boy eating chips and listening to his iPod. 8x10.  Right then and there the manager kicked him out and made him start gathering his stuff in front of 30 bidders.  The guy looked completely broken and I really felt bad for him especially when a couple of people started openly laughing at him.