Welcome, fellow Californian !

Do you attend auctions in San Berdu ?  Let us know what it's like down there.

Going to a lot of auctions today..home for lunch between some of them.

Auction A, B, C.  Auction B was a conflict of time with Auction C.

I went to C....only 10 or so bidders as I expected, but one of them has more money than sense.
The auctioneer is weird..he is the facility owner. He always asks his local mgr how much is owed on the locker.
First one, a 10 x 30 with doors at each end, owed $1250.

The bidder with no sense (who has never been here before) offers $750. I would have started it at $300. Then it goes up until the original bidder gets it at $850. Lkr was essentially 1/2 full but stuff was spread over the entire length and width only 3 feet high. He might break even or make a bit.

Next one goes for $500 (a 10 x 10) and pretty nice. Might break even or make a bit.

Next one goes for $500...(a 10 x 10) and not so nice...first bidder got it also, so now he is in 2 lkrs for $1,350 and that was it for him.  Next two lockers are trash and each sold for $250 or so.

My contribution to this auction was to run all these people UP, UP, and UP. May they learn a lesson from this.

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Auction A (I heard) only had 40 people but prices were outrageous.
Auctioneer is a dips**t and got to Auction B 40 minutes late so I got to go to it.
Prices outrageous. Didn't have to run any of the 80 people there up...they did it to themselves. All 4 lkrs went to newbies at high prices.

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Home for lunch and skipping 2 facilities with only 2 lkr each.  After that the next 2 are suppsed to have 15 and 17 each but we know how that goes.

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After lunch: facilities D and E....I heard they did indeed have 2 each and all 4 were trash. I made the right decision not to go.

Facilities F and G (15 and 19 supposedly). F went down to 9....8 were trash; #9 went for $550 because it had one of those Little Rascal type wheelchairs in it with plastic still on the arms and seats. One guy claims he can get $500 for them (of almost any brand); a regular of the 8 years I've been active said he had 2 over the years and had one of them for a year before it finally sold for $200.

Facility G I got to late because I was actually MAKING money when an eBay customer drove 90 miles to pick up an item. The "G" group did come across with 14 lkrs. Ten had been done by the time I got there. One had gone for $500 and consensus was that was twice too high. The other 9 at that point had gone between $1 and $20...what does THAT tell you?  So, with 4 left, the next 2 were trash, then a 10 x 10 about 1/4 full with a big air compressor, pallet lifter, a few small tool boxes....went for $550.

So, I ended the day only having the joy of sending a few folks away with fewer bucks and some mediocre lkrs. The only place I even bid was the very first facility I went to with about 10 bidders...and it was still a bust for me. Oh well.

Good luck MovieMan - but at the normal rate of payment now a days you may be down to 30-40 by auction. 

You think? 

Still that is a large number of units and sure to bring the crowds.


The first 2 have time conflict so I am going to try the less attended auction and hope to score there
while the mobs are at the other two.  After the first one I go to I join the mob.

Gotta try !

Thursday the 26th, 2012....will be going to 6 facilities with possible total of 60 lkrs. Should be able to get one wouldn't you think...we'll see !

If it showed how much work goes into cleaning out, selling and profiting from the lockers...no one would watch.

Maybe that's why they haven't taken repeated suggestions by me and others to show cleaning out, dump runs, etc. 

I dont do any research on the show! Saw the prep that comes in the radio station and there was a story on storage bors.

I THINK (just my opinion) that he was commenting that BY NOW everyone knows the SW participants are paid for their efforts, that they are bidding with those paychecks and that there is some staging of the units they buy.  If it is true that most of us believe that, then this is beating a dead horse.

That said, I still enjoy bashing the finds they get and the prices at which they place the values. Still, the show is entertaining for what it is and a couple of the characters are entertaining as well.

You should do some sells just to the regular vendors.  They will be picking you over before you even get setup normally.

Some of the regular vendors at my flea market sell to other vendors, but I've pretty much found that counter-productive. Why would I knowingly sell an item to a local vendor so HE an turn around and sell it to the end-user for more money?

If I sell an item to HIM for say $5 when I thought I could get $10 to $12 for it from an end-user, it just doesn't make sense to me. Sure I may have to bring it out a few times, but how much effort does that take.

THE EXCEPTION TO THIS (for me)...is selling an item to a vendor who I KNOW sells out of town (50 to 100 miles away). I sold a nice set of old theatre posters (Our Gang) to a guy for $50...he'll take them 100 miles away where he will get $100 for them, but he will have made a big round trip and paid $135 for two car parking spots to do so. I will never be selling there.

Another fellow buys collectible lighters, old military stuff from me, and if I'm not selling it on eBay I will sell to him for less than I would the end-user so he can drive 50 miles and sell it for 1.5 to 2 times what I am selling it for to him.

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On the other hand I love picking items from vendors who aren't too sharp in the research and pricing area, especially on some electronics and specialty tools. Buy it from them for $5 to $10 and sell for $15 to $100. I bought a gps from a guy for $5 and sold it on eBay for $65. That's a nice markup.