More towards ur question, the "low end crap" you speak of is some peoples bread and butter. Quick ad on CL and, for the right price, plenty of people are willing to take it off your hands.

I don't know, from my experience selling on Ebay, I really can't be bothered to write a custom ad, figure out postage, pack and ship a $5 or $10 dollar item. after Ebay takes there cut, I'm making next to nothing. If I'm going to that kind of effort, I want to make at least $40 or $50 on the transaction to bother.

Perhaps I got the wrong impression of this website. I assumed that the regulars were making a living at buying and selling at the storage unit auctions, but sales results from another tread makes me think otherwise. Profit of a few thousand dollars is definitely a hobby, you need to be clearing 30 or 40k at least to make a living at this.       

Don't understand the "humble" remark?  I just don't enjoy selling at flea's.  Don't look down on people that do.

Don't get me wrong, I actually like going to flea markets sometimes, but I think you have to be somewhat humble to sit out in the hot sun weekend after weekend selling items for a few dollars each. It's just not me. Now if I was unemployed, it would be something I'd be a lot more open to.

 

.I don't know if you have bought on EBAY.If your feedback transactions are in the low numbers you might want to buy some cheap things to get the numbers up.It looks better when people are checking out your listings.

Good luck!

I was going to suggest the same thing. When I'm looking to buy on ebay, I steer clear of people with low number ratings. Too easy to set up an account, list a bunch of stuff and never ship when people pay you. I've seen some sneaky things on Ebay. I remember when the Xbox 360 came out, people were listing empty boxes for sale. it clearly said in the description of the item it's was for the Box only, but the title suggested they were selling a Xbox 360 system. I email a couple of the winners and told them, "Hey Stupid, you do realize you won a $400 auction for an empty box!".  The guy had no idea, email me back saying no he was buying the Xbox system.    

Welcome to the forums mike. What part of the country are you from?

In live in New Jersey too and we get that all the time. I recall getting stopped by the police in another state and they demanded to see my passport!

You really do need to go to an auction and experience it before you even consider buying a unit.  I went to
As far the rest of your questions, from my personal experience:
We live on just over an acre, so we have plenty of room to store items, both large & small (there is an amazing amount of little, but valuable items).
We spend every Saturday at a local swap meet (flea market).
All furniture and large items are listed on craigslist.  We sell out of our home and have never had an issue or a weirdo or problem.  We are very rural and I weed out folks before giving out our address.

I too have a pretty big property and an empty basement and attic, plenty of room to stuff treasures from storage unit auction. I how ever have little interest in going the flea market route. I really can't see myself selling a used toaster oven at a flea market on my weekends. I was wonder if anyone gives there low end crap for someone else to sell (for a small percentage) and keep the more valuable items to sell on Ebay or Criag's list. Maybe I'm not humble enough to be a serious storage unit buyer, I still have a full time job (at least for now) that pays pretty well.

StorageWar cherry picks the units they show on TV. You are not seeing the other dozen units other people bid on and win at the auctions. Also if they really showed the units they won, more often then not there would be nothing exciting to show on TV. The show would get boring pretty quick. They are filming probably a dozen units a week for each buyer and only showing the most interesting ones. Like the ones with the one treasure they find.

My interest in storage units started a good 5 years before the TV show storage wars. I was a work one day and we were clearing out a cabinet of old software. Used to be you had to have a one copy of the software on site for every computer your business had it installed on, this was before the idea of site licenses became popular. We filled a dumpster full of Office 97 software, new in the box, and I say to myself I wonder if anyone would buy this on Ebay. Office XP was out then, and I didn't think so. I was floored when I did a quick check, people were paying $40 or $50 a copy. I moved that dumpster into my office, took the contents home over the course of a week and earned $800 from Ebay. After that I sold about 25 grand worth of stuff on ebay, and they didn't send me a 1099 form either, but I did make some kind of silver member status, got a folder and a special number to call for Ebay help.

When I started to run low on stuff to sell, the idea of buying storage units came to me. I attended three auctions so far, learned a lot by watching other people, but I've yet to place a bid on anything. I'm getting interested again, planning on attending another auction soon.