Auction Hunters Misleads the Public

Despite the name, “reality TV” often bears little resemblance to reality. After all, a show needs to be exciting enough to hook viewers and keep them coming back again and again.

The secret to creating a perfect reality TV show is to balance realism with melodrama in a way that will be engaging to viewers. It should be no surprise, then, to realize that many aspects of storage auction television are faked or played up for the cameras.

Spike’s popular show Auction Hunters frequently comes under fire from viewers who believe the show offers a misleading view of the auction industry. Several complaints are made:

• Ton and Allen travel all over the country searching for auctions, which is hardly a cost-effective strategy for real-world auction-hunters.
• The overwhelming majority of their finds are positive or earn a profit.
• They always know about the items that they find, and they manage to either be experts on a specific item or know an expert.
• They seem to always have buyers lined up for the items they win, even if those items occupy a very specific niche.

These same complaints can be made of other auction shows, of course, but Auction Hunters seems to paint an especially rosy picture of the auction hunting lifestyle.

The show does open with a disclaimer that the program shows only the best finds, but it’s hard to keep that disclaimer in mind when episode after episode shows the auction-hunters finding rare antiques, valuable artwork, expensive vehicles and other attractive finds.

Other programs, like Storage Wars, show the bidders losing money on bad units more often, which lends to the realism of the show. By choosing to cut out these segments, Auction Hunters presents a less realistic glimpse into the lives of storage unit buyers.

Staff members of Auction Hunters and other similar programs, in addition to bidders, auctioneers and others involved in the show, are required to sign nondisclosure agreements. This means that it’s hard to know for sure exactly what’s going on behind the scenes at an auction.

It’s likely that some or all of the following occur at least some of the time at every show:

• A lot of footage is filmed, but it’s cut down to show only the most positive aspects of the event.
• Rare or interesting items are placed into the unit after it’s been purchased. This is referred to as “salting,” and it allows film crews to get lots of usable footage of attractive-looking units even if the auction itself didn’t go well.
• The unit is pre-loaded with items by the show’s staff, and bidding is faked.
• The show is scripted and everything is determined in advance by the writers.

The final product of any reality TV show is probably a combination of these strategies with some unscripted events thrown in for flavor. It’s impossible to know for sure, thanks to the nondisclosure agreement signed by participants, but assuming that these programs are staged does help explain many of the most troubling elements of the programs.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with playing up the exciting elements of a program to help gain ratings, but it does have a very real negative impact on the industry.

Viewers, not realizing that the shows do not necessarily represent reality, may flock to auctions and bid substantially more than the units are worth. Believing that every unit might contain a rare treasure, novices overspend and drive up the costs for professionals.

This is bad news for everyone who tries to make a living from auction-hunting, and it’s one reason why researching the industry is so vital to people looking to get involved in the business. It’s possible to make a real living from storage unit auctions, but it can only happen if you’re educated about what you’re doing and avoid buying into the reality television hype from Auction Hunters and other similar programs.

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