Well, it's 4:30 Pacific time and I worked about 6 hours in the locker today.

Despite having already determined it was good for at least a grand profit just on the stuff I looked at yesterday, and then getting more great collectibles today, I HAD A NAGGING FEELING....would this sucker actually make money?

I think it just had to do with the discussion in another thread a few days ago...the relief feeling when at least THE COST has been covered.

This one will do fine, but it will take a bit longer to get the $1,900 covered. The $825 lkr got itself covered in 3 Saturday sales days.

*****

Today I went through about 30 boxes I think and ended up filling 20 with sellable stuff.....that was a darn good return on time and boxes. Hardly any trash (relatively speaking). A couple of suitcase with clothing, but no boxes of clothes as some lockers have. There was obviously a lot of shop stuff, but also a nice big dining table with 6 chairs, an mission style hutch  that is about 7 feet tall (one piece !) and 5 feet wide (or a little more), some tvs (older style), lots of new in the box stuff he hadn't used yet, some DVDs, old x-box, etc, etc.

Don't know if I mentioned the box of Bradford exhange plates the other day. Maybe 30 or so (not in the boxes, but with an envelope of the COAs ! (keep the boxes idiot). Edit: The first Saturday I sold these the big sellers (at $4 each !) were of sailing ships. Norman Rockwells went at $3. They don't sell high, but with the large quantity of them I got it adds up. end of edit. Today I found a box of paper wrapped Coca-Cola stuff.
Gotta quit...tired of moving and packing stuff. Tonight I'll look up stuff on eBay.

Later...

Cool~
Ok~now in pic 7 what is the metal thing that looks like a tail of a plane or blimp or some sort of flying object?

Good eye !  It's a transparent heavy plastic plane light which is suspended from the ceiling by two chrome bars.
Looks good for $75 to $100 I think.

Desk top is there somewhere I think. I wouldn't put any work into it and would ask maybe $40 to move it.

12 hour day today, Wednesday, May 9,2012.....

Went to 4 auctions. Got the last locker of the day, a 10 x 30 (Yikes !) 3/4 packed....paid $1900 for it and the last $1,000 in bidding was between I and a fellow who has been doing it for about a year. Of late he has been stepping up his bids, but didn't go all the way.

I've worked up a spreadsheet showing 64 items totaling proposed $3,100 in sales making this (so far) a $1K profit IF all goes well.  Given that I've only looked at the top 5 feet all the way around, I think it's safe to say this is going to be a winner.

Here are a couple of pics and over the next few days (for relaxation !) I'll start a thread and post more pics.  A super locker from a 50 year old couple who also had good stuff from grandpa !  

Waiting for the right ones paid off this month...got one for $825 a couple of weeks ago that is panning out nicely too.

The doll house shown below is about 4 feet left to right and maybe two feet front to back. Some furniture showing through the windows. Two stories plus the attic.  Maybe worth $200 to $300 (to the right buyer of course).



Pic below is a slightly domed box about 18" left to right and 14" front to back. I was able to get it open by leaning over the dog cage and had gun cleaning stuff in it but I don't think there are any guns in the locker. All boxes that were at the 4 to 5 foot level had been opened at some time...this guy had defaulted and bailed out this locker about 5 times over the last year and a half as wittnessed by the locks piled by the door....never a good sign.

However, there are lower level boxes he couldn't get to, and he left a LOT of good stuff behind anyway !



Here's the link to the picture thread about this locker:

http://storageauctionforums.com//index.php/topic,2579.msg18061.html#msg18061

Now it's 7:30 a.m. Thursday morn and have to go WORK IN IT !

Got another Sentry safe in my last locker for $825. I didn't bid that high because it was showing, but because of the overall quality of the locker and the POSSIBILITY there might be something good in the safe.

I used the Sentry method of getting the combination (just do a search for "safes" and you'll see the threads here) and got it open 24 hours after I obtained it.

In the little black drawer inside it had 7 "silver" rings. Only one turned out to be silver with a couple of little bracelets as well...$48 at the "gold" shop I go to.

Safes are fun and if you get enough of them and they have some size to them, they can pay off.

Right now I have three, two of which I got at auctions, 3rd at estate sale .... need to sell two of them !

Open an eBay store if you plan on selling a lot of stuff. The fee is like $15 a month, but when you list something at a fixed price it's only 20 cents for 30 days. For auctions they usually give you 50 free listing a month as well. What you save on the listing fees can easily offset the $15 per month fee.

When I first started selling on eBay over 8 years ago I looked into having a "store" but somehow I could just never make the leap. I couldn't see the advantage. Haven't explored it much since.

I only list about 10 to 20 items a month so that may have something to do with it. I like eBay and make fair dough there since the millions of viewers can't be beat for exposing better items, but I do (like many people) have complaints.

Recently they kicked off an item (due to a request from a manufacturer). When I emailed the manufacturer I got the usual letter stating reasons. They also asked me to let them know if I saw any other instances on eBay. Well, there were six of this item on at that time so I sent them 6 separate emails with the item # as identifier.  All the other items continued to run and several of them sold in the hundreds of dollars. This just plain tics me off.

There is NO consistency either from eBay or from manufacturers who police their products. eBay even has the nerve to say "we are not targting YOU" but that seems a little hard to believe when they then let other items run to completion.

I HAVE FOUND that running a questionable item on a 1 or 3 day basis either at buy it now or auction prices sometimes works, BUT OF COURSE THIS IS DANGEROUS if you have had violations in the past (especially the recent past few months). I have written before about a fellow who had 15,000 plus feedback and was kicked off. He started another account (using I assume other credit card backing or someone elses credit card backing for billing) and quickly zoomed to 1,000 plus feedback because he sold good stuff.  Recently he was taken off again and a friend said it was for just ONE WEEK; will have to watch his listings.

Unfortunately, eBay really IS the only game in town despite folks who will promote Etsy and others. None of them seem to have the real pull of eBay.  This is of course ALL MY PERSONAL OPINION !

Sounds like a good flea for shopping and selling.

As for me it would be UNUSUAL if I wasn't selling on a Saturday.  This Sat will be #394 for me in the 8 years and 4 months I have been buying lockers.

I usually take off about 4 to 8 Saturdays a year for two longer trips and some shorter ones.

Today, Friday the 4th of May, a new flea opened about 20 miles away. I shopped it. Only about 40 vendors including some who sell where I do on Saturday, but nice to see a new scene and will watch to see if it takes off. I have thought of selling one more day a week but haven't done that in about 6 years so might be hard to get back to it.

OK, Booty Hunter, I was waiting for this to happen, and I hope I'm wrong, but I've been spotting this kind of thing over about 1.25 years now here on this forum.

Your first two posts did not have the signature block you now sport in your half dozen thread starts.

If you are actually a person who is interested in going to and buying auction lockers, then I apologize, but frankly it looks to me like you are just trying to gain some audience for the product you sell.

Am I wrong ?

If I am not wrong we call this SPAM !

Is that a Western Diamondback or another species of Rattlesnake? Had to look up Ryolite, wasn't familar with it. Thanks for the pics.

Diamondback as far as I know. I love nature but I don't get down to the nitty-gritty of the classification or identification system. Bird watching is one thing I could never relate to but I run into "birders" sometimes...easily identified because they are usually in twos or threes and "always" have binocs around their necks. They are the ones who can tell you exactly what they are looking at !