DONT BUY WHAT YOU CANT SEE!!

I know when I get to the auctions and the door goes up ....most of the lockers just look like trash, unmarked boxes, old furniture etc. I take an inverntory in my head of what the items are worth that I can see...PERIOD. Its really intimidating to me to throw my hard earned cash at anything less. Im baffled at the Knuckleheads throwing 1,000.00 + bids at boxes and junk....looking for that golden ticket they think they are going find..becuase they just watched storage wars on tv. It just doesnt happen like that, or maybe Im doing wrong..lol.

I expect most of the "mystery box" buyers to fizzle out soon once they spread the word on how that worked out for them...or maybe they are just keeping quiet because i have not seen one post in here where some one wrote about ...YA DUDE I paid $1800.00 for a locker full of boxes..mystery boxes and they were all filled with collectibles and not dishes and towels and personal photos...I made a fortune. LMAO

I was a volume buyer myself. There are enough units out there where you don't have to gamble. If you only bid on what you can see, then everything you can't see will be pure profit. I only profiled units in two categories. 1. Bargains 2. Units I couldn't see a return of my investment on. I would buy anything. (Except industrial copy machines & MDF office desks from the 1980's. LOL) I would even buy the units nobody else wanted as long as I thought I could make a buck on them.

Truth is, you don't have to gamble to find unique & valuable items in a storage unit. If you buy enough common units, you will inevitably come across the wow factor.

Alab, congratulations on the truck. Owning your own box truck is an important factor in reducing your moving expenses. Every penny earned or saved in this business affects your bottom line.

We have discussed this in multiple threads, but here it goes anyway...

Bidding only what you can see or based on your personal valuation of the contents in the unit certainly is a sound strategy, during normal times. Many of us have agreed that since the TV shows, it is nearly impossible to win any units only bidding on the value of seen items, minus the calculated profit margin and direct expenses.

There is no doubt $50 units sell for $500, problem is EVERY type of unit has skyrocketed in cost.

$25 junk units are $250, $50 mystery box units are $500, $700 furniture units are $1500. and so on.

90% of the units I bid on are full of contents I cannot see or value, I win buy guesstimating the quantity & value of the "unseen" based on the "seen". Most of the times I can still makey money on the unit, sometimes I pull a "whoops". Until the crowds of "treasure hunters" die down this is the method I will have to use.

We all long for the day of (depending on size of city) a half dozen to two dozen regulars, and everybody lets each other win the units they want at a low price.

There have been post on here where XYZ bought a unit filled with boxes and stuff and made a killing.  Normally it's someone new to the forums.

Oldtimers or newbies - everyone has their own view of how to buy a unit.  There is no specific "right way".  If your method is working for you great, I wish you luck.  With the prices I see in my area that strategy went out the window last year.  The high prices are also why myself and may others have started to hit yard sales and other places to get goods to re-sale.