Revivin' old threads! 85

When I first got into the business, I hit a small jackpot on the 3rd unit I bought. It had a lot of dusty old boxes in the front but in the back there was a safe and a classic guitar that weren't visible from the door.
The safe contained a coin collection, a stamp collection, confederate bills, an antique revolver, an antique pocket watch collection, about 30 gold/diamond rings and other trinkets. All in all, everything sold for about $2,500. The unit also contained a lot of old militaria and antique photographs. Really cool unit with a lot of history...will never forget it.

Finding a safe inside this unit is probably why I kept buying units. I have been chasing that rush ever since. I think that an early score like this is what keeps certain people in the business. If you come out with high expectations and you buy a few bad units, it's easy to dismiss the storage auction business as a waste of money. Those of us who were lucky enough to buy a few good units early on got the encouragement we needed to keep going.


 

Everything sold for $2500?? What was the price of gold when you bought that unit, $250 an ounce?

The most I have bid and won was $1450.

I have bid on units as high as $1650 & $3750 but didn't win those.

Yes, No Smoking rule in affect most locations.

One of the things to think about when deciding how to maximize profit out of all the inventory found in storage lockers is the "freshness" of the inventory, or how quickly do the items you have become obsolete or out of style.

I suggest going through all the boxes and bags and make sure what you have. Don't let piles of boxes and bags from a previous locker sit in storage without knowing what is in them.

Things like electronics, appliances, toys, games, some clothes can lose value very quickly over a short period of time. Make sure you get these things to the market as soon as possible.

other things like housewares, kitchenware, home decor, artwork, furniture, linens, some clothes, sporting goods, collectibles & antiques (unless they are really HOT right now!) can be left to sell later or try to maximize your sales/profit.

I save up the seasonal merchandise, especially Christmas items, & sell them this time of year. It has been worth it to me, especially since I can mass gobs of Christmas stuff on the tables at the flea market and get people to pay $.050 - $1 a piece for used dollar store items that probably only cost $1 new.

Getting ready to pull out 2 kerosine heaters, an outdoor blast heater, and several electric heaters to sell.

Currently massing lawn & garden stuff for Spring. I have 2 lawnmowers, 2 weed eaters, 2 electric hedge trimmers, and a leaf blower. Not to mention about 20 different assorted planting pots. If I sold them now, I would get killed. Those will come out at the end of March.

Been to a few auctions this week. One thing that has changed since last time I posted (last month?) is a complete reversal in demographics. Now the old timers (pre-tv shows) are coming back out and the newbies are only a trickle compared to the wave after wave of the last two years.

Units have been sub-par (not good) 90% are junk to very low quality, the other 10% average quality. Everything is being bid on and won, and some units still too high cause of the 3-6 month newbies & the new newbies.

One thing I noticed is there appears to be a circling of sharks waiting on the albacore tuna, instead of catching the sardines. Based on "murmurs and talk" through the crowd and some of the bidding behavior of the old timers that are back; it seems quite a few people are waiting on "jackpot" units or at least very nice units to bid or spend their money on.

I can think of only one "jackpot" unit I have seen and it wasn't sold cause the opening bid was $3000. I have seen some very nice units and I have won some very nice units, but the demographics of my area just do not lend itself to having very wealthy people leaving a huge store of expensive things in a storage unit. Not likely to happen very often.

It will be interesting to see how this new strategy of waiting on the great units to bid on works out for the entire auction crowd.

Forgot to put in the results of the third location mentioned in the post just above.

There was a couple there (mid 50's) with two boys in their 20s.  The wife was taking notes on every locker up for sale (maybe 8 of them). More on this later.

Anyway, the door goes up on a 10x20 and it is packed left to right (10 feet), top to bottom (10 feet) and presumably all the way back.

The couple buys it for $350 and are as happy as clams. The ONLY thing of value showing in that solid wall of crap was the end of a pickup truck tool box (diamond plate). The rest looked like parts, clothing, CRAP.

Later I walked over to them and said, "Let me guess...that was the first locker you've ever bought"

He: "How did you know?"  

I: "Well, you'll get some good experience anyway...a few dump runs there"

He: "Yeah, we knew it wouldn't be as easy as it looked on TV."   (you think?)

I: "I was wondering why you were taking notes on all the lockers you saw?"

She: "We just wanted to keep track of what was in the lkr and what the lkr sold for."

Bottom line on this one: Probably another newbie will bite the dust.

At least they are collecting data and trying to do some research. Thats more then 90% of what most newbies do. I remember seeing some others do this as well, document how much units went for and what they saw in the units. Now that I think about it, most of them never moved into the bidding/buying stage so they must have looked at their notes and concluded that buying storage units would not be a profitable business/hobby.

You forgot to say, "Boy you guys got that unit cheap!!"