Thanks, it's a lot of work!  And it's not always this good.......another guy I know has had four stinkers in a row!  He knows he's about due to get another good one, but it can get pretty disappointing when it seems like you are doing a lot of work for nothing.  It is a little harder with all the new competition.  I may go two or three auctions and not buy anything, and then buy four at once.  I bought 7 last week, and they are all cleaned out and a bunch of the stuff is already gone.  Out of all those, I have about a half a trailer load of stuff sitting on my shop floor left to process.  This is a full time gig, and is not the ideal occupation for someone that is inherently lazy!  But, to me it is a lot of fun, it's like being on a treasure hunt every single day!

I'm in the Seattle area.  When you look at this, just keep in mind that all this stuff came from a number of units.  I buy quite a few per month, and this doesn't show all the work and garbage I have to go through to find the good stuff!

A couple more pics:

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Nice Score!  I love those kinds of units!

They just sold a 1982 Aston Martin Lagonda (went for $10,100) and a 1969-70 Land Rover ($7500) last week in Bellevue.  The Aston was supposed to be a good runner, but it's a damn ugly car!

It is kind of crazy right now.  All these new guys (and I'm not knocking them, we were all new once!) are showing up and some of them have quite a bit of cash and they are bidding things up to stupid levels.  Their bids are not based in any way on the value of items they are seeing in the units.  They are hoping for the magic television score and are really gambling more than they are making a smart investment.  It will probably be like this for a while.  All you can do is keep going and hope to find an auction that for one reason or another not as many people show up too and jump in if you can afford to.  Also, a lot of people are off between Christmas and New Years, so when everybody gets their schedule back to normal, maybe there won't be quite so many bidders.

I went on two separate auction runs today.  Ended up with two units.  Bid on MANY more, but way too many people and prices way too high on most of them.  More bidders than I have ever seen at any auctions, and I'd say a good 90% of them were new to the game.  Hopefully, given time, they will realize that they can't make any money at these elevated prices.  In the meantime, don't quit your day job!

I got three totally cleaned out today and went to another auction.  I didn't buy anything today, lot's of new faces at a silent auction, and prices were going crazy.  I think the facility owners are loving this new action, they are finally getting most of their money back on delinquent units!

Anyway, I just did a quick sort to separate out the personals and got everything else stuffed in the trailer, so haven't really done a thorough inventory yet.  But, some of the goodies so far are:  Really nice microfiber sectional (should be able to get 400-500 anyway, it looks new), the already mentioned Air Compressor....nice Campbell/Hausfield 80 gallon upright (pretty sure it's already sold for 400), a black leather couch and love seat, all kinds of tools......air compressor guy was a concrete guy, so all kinds of concrete finishing tools and various hand tools in that unit, a bunch of brand new in the boxes small kitchen appliances (looks like maybe wedding gifts, most everything from Macy's), a nice outdoor gas BBQ, a bunch of paintings, a HP Laptop (running Vista, so not totally ancient, and in very good condition), a couple of fairly large tv's, and outdoor patio furniture set, lot's of DVD's and some CD's, some clothes I haven't really had a chance to look at yet, but did notice some nice shoes and athletic gear, and other misc. stuff.  Overall, very happy with the purchases so far!

I was at an auction last month, and one of the guys I occasionally do stuff with asked me if I wanted to partner up on a unit they had just opened the door on.  I said sure, why not.  Anyway, we ended up getting this thing for 780 bucks.  It didn't look too bad, until we started digging into it.  It was a 12' x 30', and that first day, we made it about half way through.  We had one trailer full of garbage for the dump, and the second trailer almost entirely full of stuff for Goodwill.  We were pretty bummed, and thought we were going to lose money for sure!

The next day we get into it, and our entire outlook changed almost instantly.   We ended up finding a Brand New never installed set of kitchen and bathroom cabinets in the front, along with a new stainless steel dishwasher and a new stainless steel gas ranges, and a brand new Heatilator Gas Peninsula Fireplace!  Yeah!

Anyway, I put the cabinets up on CL on a Saturday night around 10:30 pm, and they were sold by 11:00 am Sunday morning for 1600, plus a 50 delivery fee!  I sold the dishwasher the day before that for 300, and I sold the heatilator a week later for 1100!  We still have the new range, a side by side refrigerator (pretty new but got a little trashed), and about 500-600 worth of misc. small stuff to go. 

We were sweating it there for a little while, but pulled it out in the end.  I'd like to say that was all skill and we actually planned it that way, but  the truth is, WE GOT LUCKY!