Just watched the shows and here are a few observations questions I have.

I know the answer to some of these questions is it's TV, it has to be entertaining.

Mike took everything out of a 5 x 5 room of value and sold the rest to someone for $500? 

Why are they telling each other what kind of rooms they do and don't bid on? Just allows them to run each other up? 

It's interesting to see different bidders who all have a "niche" room they are looking for, but they all were passing on rooms with money.

Chris - Who cares who is bidding against you? Bid as high as you want and quit! (I got Joe P.'d! LOL!) Funny watching Chris trying to figure out who was bidding against him, and Tad too! 

Chris & Tad - seasoned vets, or first day on the job? Bidding against each other is "doubling down"??, I call it a newbie goof up 

Chris - stop smelling everything! Gross!

So Joe P. gets $1000 dollars for binoculars with fogged lenses? hmmm, I have the same bird identification book he was flipping through.

Candy & Courtney have to take their fur coat to a vintage clothing expert? I thought they WERE the vintage clothing experts? Another first day on the job duo?

Joe P. "I don't do flea markets!" Then WTF were you doing with all the stuff from your buying 20 units a day business?? 

Candy - Thanks for wearing that thin summer dress with no bra! 

All depends on what the majority of storage unit buyers prefer. I don't like the way online auctions work so I hope they don't catch on.

Buying in person is the best way to determine fair market value.

Great info Randomstore, based on your description, I doubt that unit would break $2500 in my area, but I think y'all can sell new & used merchandise for more money in California then we can here, so value and cost might be geographically relative.

Well, This months auction scene hasn't been as popular as previous months 

The first part of the month gave us thin crowds and some great deals. The end of month gave us large crowds (people taking vacation leave i'm sure) and extravagent bidding, AGAIN!! 

A lot of one year on-and-off again newbies plus many old timers were back in the auctions at the end of December.

Question for all, especially the newbies... If bidding stupid high on units didn't work back in January, March, August, or October when you dropped out of the scene the first time, what makes you think bidding like that in December will make things better?? 

I know, you can't win if you don't pay, I mean play. The Old Timers weren't letting the Newbs get anything cheap, and the Newbs weren't letting the Old Timers get anything cheap.

Guess folks had Christmas money from Aunt Betty burning in their pockets.

Now we've got 3-4 months of Tax Season "Thousandaires" to look forward to! 

Glad I'm loaded down with inventory to sell!! 

I have a different spin.

First I don't put other peoples discs found in storage units in my computer. That's a big no-no! My advice is if you have to listen to the mixed music CD's, DVD's, and found out whats on those unmarked discs then use a computer found in a storage unit. For me, they go straight in the garbage. Now physical photos, Poloroids, would be a different story, but I will cross that bridge if it ever comes. I would hope (please God) that finding a cache like this is as rare as finding a cache of gold coins and bars in a storage unit. The article didn't mention it, but can I assume in a case like this that ALL the property from the storage unit could be considered evidence?

Advice, decide now what your goals for buying storage units are. There is no easy way to upscale the business without having a lot of capital to invest.

The quickest ways to move inventory?

Option #1: Take all the furniture and large items to a local auction house, round up all the small quality stuff and sell them for birdseed to other re-sellers at the local flea market, everything else take to charity & list for free on Craigslist.
Pros: Everything gone in a week. Cons: You just eliminated most if not all your profit potential.

Option #2: Hire a staff of employees to help clean out units, load, unload, sort, sell, list, etc.
Pros: Should increase your ability to process units so you can buy more. Cons: Many items will be lost to damage and theft, employee salaries will eat up your profits, you will become a human resource manager instead of a re-seller, treasure hunter, hobbyist, etc. (unless you got a bunch of trustworthy, dependable friends & family that will work for minimum wage)

Option #3: Get your hands on a wad of money ($250,000?) and buy or lease an old shopping center anchor, about the size of a grocery store or Wal-Mart, fill 40% with clothes racks, 30% with tables, the rest empty space for large items (still gonna need some employees for this operation) and open up 6 days a week.
Pros: You have plenty of space to dump everything from the units, little time needed for sorting, so you can get out there a buy more units! You will be selling everything dirt cheap 6 days a week. Cons: The employee thing again! It's gonna take you a while to get your capital investment back. Your gonna let a lot of nice things go for cheap cause you don't have time to research and segregate items out to sell at higher prices or in different markets (unless you hire someone for that too.)

Option #4: One unit at a time, until you've done it enough to move up to 2 or 3 or 4 at a time, slowly growing your business, adding an employee here and there along the way, buying/leasing more space, etc.

Wait and see how you feel after spending $375 on some poopers that take the same amount of time but actually lose you money a couple of times and then see if this is something you really want to do.

Would like to know what there net worth was before they signed the contracts to appear on TV. Or, how much of that net worth is earnings saved over expenses from the TV show.

Merchandise is sometimes a little better but bidding tends to be alot higher. Those auctions draw more novices and treasure hunters. One of the differences is sometimes instead of auctioning off the whole crate or pod, they pull the contents out and auction off individual pieces or "lots".