Jackpot ! Jackpot in the Safe ?

Now that is an awesome post that I followed from the first post!! Great pics and story movieman!!! I have one coming up and of course it's going to have gold in the safe.... ....great score! Hope there are many more lockers like that to come your way!!!

Now that is an awesome post that I followed from the first post!! Great pics and story movieman!!! I have one coming up and of course it's going to have gold in the safe.... ....great score! Hope there are many more lockers like that to come your way!!!

Thanks lrnoob....doubt I'll see or GET another safe in the next 50 lkrs I view, but hopefully there will be other good lkrs.

*****

OK, here's the story on the encounter with the owner of the safe lkr.

About an hour after the locksmith left and I had secured the guns in my car, a woman pulls up in a little blue pickup.
"Did you buy this lkr at the auction?, she says.  "That's my stuff!"

Of course I informed her that it used to be her stuff but that now it was "my stuff" !  She did the usual rant about they had no right to sell her stuff, that they hadn't notified her (yeah right!), etc, etc, blah, blah, blah. Then with out another word she burned rubber down the driveway between lkr rows.

About 10 minutes later, two white trucks pull up, each driven by black guys. I only mention their race because of something one of them said a few minutes later.  ALSO, she pulls back up in her blue truck.

The guy says something like, "I understand you bought her lkr and just want to know if you can show some compassion. I don't know how you feel about two big black guys driving up on you like this."  He didn't say it in a threatening manner, but I couldn't help but feel he wanted to get some of that across to me.

Of course I'm totally within my rights and I came back with "What's your relationship to the owner?" He responded they were friends and that she was with them as they worked in their lkr about two rows away.  So I said, "Then she followed you in. She's not supposed to be on the grounds."

He sputtered a bit but continued with the "be compassionate" bit. I informed him that this was my business and the way I made my living and that had to come into it.  He asked how much I paid ! My response was "It doesn't matter whether I paid $50 or $1000 if she wants to buy it back we would have to come to some mutually agreeable figure. All this time she is 3 car lengths away in her truck. The 2nd guy had backed off when I came on confident and he didn't say boo.

Finally she wandered over and we started to talk. Continued in next post.

She was not all that emotional and her main idea was that a LOT of her mother's stuff was in there and that was her primary concern.

I had already taken a fair amount of good stuff out (especially smaller stuff) but I did not tell her that or that I had sold $185 of that stuff in a $285 day at the flea just two days before !

What she said next surprised the hell out of me.  "What was in the safe?" Seems that she and her friends had driven by just as the safe guy was leaving from in front of my lkr. It had taken her an hour to get up the nerve to come over and say something.

Turns out that the safe TOO was her parents and she had moved it into this lkr when the last of the parents died without leaving a combination.

This jibed with what the locksmith felt....SHE and her old boyfriend HAD KNOCKED THE COMBINATION LOCK off the front and then had tried to PUNCH OUT the shaft thinking that would free up the bolts. When they did that, the locksmith said they pushed a panel out the back-side of the lock tripping the LOCK RESET ! He made pretty quick work of putting a tap like device in and pulling that reset plate back toward the front of the safe and enabling him to get the thing open....I don't mind paying for talent like that !

SO, here she is asking what's in the safe. Of course I said "nothing of any value" and we moved on to discussing her possibly buying back the lkr contents.

After some discussion (and no tears on her part) I said, "I'll keep the safe and use it myself and I'll sell you everything else for $1,000 with the contents "as-is, as you see them here." This was to cover me for the stuff I had already taken out.

Continued in next post.

WOW Movieman, that's my dream locker! No auctions in my area until Saturday and there are only 2 units in two locations 40 miles apart! Auctions have dissapeared in the last week and nothing next week. You got me really sweatin' for some lockers!!

WOW Movieman, that's my dream locker! No auctions in my area until Saturday and there are only 2 units in two locations 40 miles apart! Auctions have dissapeared in the last week and nothing next week. You got me really sweatin' for some lockers!!

Thanks CopiaVita....don't worry there will always be more lkrs and some of them will be good !

*****

Continuing story from above.
You have to remember that I had already sold $185 out of the lkr AND that I had another $400 plus of items like the Storm watch, Harley stuff, etc IN MY POSESSION and not in the lkr, so I was in a good position (and I had the guns and safe).

She said "Could we come up with some kind of payment plan?" HOLY CRAP lady, you got to be kidding me. But I kept my calm and told her I had the lkr until Sept 24 (really until Sept 30) and that she could pay me a third now and then two more 1/3 payments by the 24th, and that NOTHING WOULD LEAVE THE LKR until full payment was made and that if she decided after the first or second payment that she couldn't complete the deal, I would keep any money paid AND I WOULD KEEP ALL THE STUFF.

She thought that might work. She told me she had $250 right now and thought she could get the extra up to the $333 mark by 6 p.m. today and would call me. We left it at that and she went back over to her friend's lkr area. She also informed me that she had owed $550 on the lkr. If that were true she should have paid it up !

Continued in next post....I told you this was a long story, but the details count here I think and hopefully some of you will be interested in this and might pick up a pointer or tell ME something I could have done differently. On to next post.

LOL payment plan? From the same lady who couldn't pay her monthly storage fees...I don't know man...I would have just said, "It's legally my stuff now...and you can't have my stuff"...but if you can squeeze some extra $$$ out of the deal, go for it

OK, I think this is the last part of this long (4 part post) about the owner encounter.

Now that the initial contact was over, I locked up MY lkr and went to the mgrs office. I knew it was her day off, but when I told her helper the above story she called the mgr and the mgr came down from her upstairs residence.

Here we go. Mgr maintained her cool as I told her the whole story but she wanted the woman off her property. We went out on the golf cart with her young male help along for support.

She nicely informed the frm owner of what needed to happen and she and I had talked about this BEFORE we drove out there so I wasn't surprised.

Mgr says: "You can come to any agreement you want with the new lkr owner, but YOU can not be on the property and any transfer of the property has to take place outside the compound."

This of course was a NEW TWIST on what the frm owner and I had discussed and meant I would have to load all the crap into a truck, take it OUTSIDE to city streets, etc. YIKES!

The frm owner was all sheepish of course since she had defaulted on this lkr two or three times and boy friend had bailed her out AND apparently had taken some of HER stuff too before he left the relationship.

So, the male helper escorts the frm owner out of the compound and I talk to her outside....at which points the tears DO start flowing as new over-whelming details about the new complication come out....a double move of goods. I suggested to her that I could drive her truck into the compound and that some of her friends could load it (I didn't want to do physical work). She agreed that might work, but who knows what 6 pm today (Tuesday, Aug 30, 2011) will bring.

My final idea is that I would sell her all the mom's nick-nacks,etc for the first payment of $333 and just hold on to all the other bigger stuff and sell it myself.

One last note: the mgr told me the woman OWED $950 on the lkr not the $550 the frm owner had indicated. Of course, no matter what agreement is reached, the mgr will send the frm owner to a collection agency for the difference of $950 owed to the $350 I paid. In other words at some point the woman's problem will continue as she will owe ANOTHER $600 to the storage place IN ADDITION TO anything she pays me for goods. PAY YOUR BILLS LADY! WHEW, WHAT A LONG STORY!  (but I hope it held some value or entertainment for you.)  Any thoughts ?

LOL payment plan? From the same lady who couldn't pay her monthly storage fees...I don't know man...I would have just said, "It's legally my stuff now...and you can't have my stuff"...but if you can squeeze some extra $$$ out of the deal, go for it

Most of the people who default on their lkrs just don't have a clue. They don't have much money, don't know how to manage it and just keep getting deeper in the sticky mud of their lives. I have some sympathy for them, but not much if they don't learn as they go along.

Great find on the guns. Pretty dumb of those two guys to come over with the 'compassion' speech. Still your doing more for the former locker owner than most of us would, hopefully she'll appreciate that.

Great find on the guns. Pretty dumb of those two guys to come over with the 'compassion' speech. Still your doing more for the former locker owner than most of us would, hopefully she'll appreciate that.

I doubt she will come through even at the minimum level of buying back just the nick-nacks. Six pm tonight (8 30 2011) will be my clue to moving on one way or the other.

I might have let her have any family photo's/papers I found, but as for the rest?  Nah.  Especially not on a payment plan from someone who had already defaulted at least once.
   Of course, if she does come back with her 'help', if you take a check you may be asking for it.  Tell her if you don't see Benjamin's, you don't sell. 

   Of course, if she does come back with her 'help', if you take a check you may be asking for it.  Tell her if you don't see Benjamin's, you don't sell. 

I don't take checks from someone who drives up in the biggest Mercedes they make, let alone some biker "chick" (45 years old) who drives a 1993 Ford Ranger with a flat spare in the truck bed.

I sort of thought that would be your answer.  I tend to be a master of the obvious at times.  Don't worry, I piss everyone off at least once with that attitude.
   I really don't know if I'd have let her have a damn thing out of it, but based on you saying all the good valuables were out?  I'd make damn sure that she knows her getting the other stuff is contingent upon cash in hand, and THEY clean the unit out completely, not 'cherry pick' the items she wants and leaves the rest for you. (Of course, if you've already turned a nice profit, a little bit of clean up won't be a big issue, I'm sure.)

Myself I woudl have probably told the woman that I had moved everything and would only sell it on a piece by piece basis. 

Myself I woudl have probably told the woman that I had moved everything and would only sell it on a piece by piece basis. 

Two reasons I wouldn't do it that way.

1)  She was standing in front of the open locker seeing all the tons of stuff still in it.

2) Even if door had been closed, I wouldn't want to meet up with her and have her puttering around looking in this box  and that box....more trouble than it would be worth. She wasn't interested in the big stuff I would have been happy to piecemeal out to her.

I made her the offer of all or nothing thinking she would go for it...and to some extent she has. My backup position is the mom's nick-nacks for $333. If she doesn't go for that, I'll sell the better ones and others go to Goodwill or my backup volume buyers for cheap.