Man, I went on one of the Storage runs yesterday.  This was one where they had 10 facilities and 40-50 units for sale.  It was BRUTAL!!!  Just since last month (which already had some stupid prices), prices have skyrocketed on units.  A typical 300-400 unit was selling for 900-1150!  A one dollar garbage unit was selling for 25-80 bucks!  WTF?  How do these people expect to make any money?  I have plenty of cash to be buying these things up if I want to, but I'm not STUPID!  The whole atmosphere has changed......instead of bidding on value you can see in the unit and spending a reasonable amount that will just about guarantee you will at least get your money back, these guys are "rolling the dice" and hoping they are going to find some valuable hidden treasure in the back.  For most of them, it's not going to happen, and, it's not just the new guys doing it.  Hopefully this is just a quick fad and the auctions will turn out to be like January and February are for the gym.....lot's of activity for a while and then things are back to normal by March!   

yeah nobody reads the disclaimer for that show. 100s of units. digging through dirty socks and drawers. To find that one nugget. But it gives me hope that maybe one day that hard round thing in the dirty sock is a antique pistol and not another used *****.

Yeah, those are hard to sell when they're used!  And I hope you were wearing gloves when you reached in and grabbed it!   

I do not personally own a store, but I do sell to a couple of thrift stores.  I end up with so many "smalls", that I just don't have time to deal with them all.  I try to save a bunch of stuff for my garage and estate sales, but if it still has value but is not quite valuable enough to put up on eBay or Craigslist, I'll box it up and take a load down to one of the thrift stores and they will purchase stuff by the boxes.  Of course the price is dependent on what I bring them, but I kind of know what they want now and try to cater to their needs.  Getting rid of the stuff in this way is just icing on the cake for me, because if I guessed right on the unit I bought, I've already made my money back long ago off eBay and CL, so this is just a little extra "pocket money"!

Yeah, nice score!  Sounds like you're being smart hanging on to it for a while too....if you don't need the money, it's the way to go. 

Great Job!  The Gold and Guns get all the glory, but it's units like these that are the "bread and butter" and will put some quick cash in your pocket!  Sounds like a pretty good deal, especially for just starting out.   Let's see some more of these kinds of posts!

The most profitable sale I have ever had (just last month) was an Estate Sale we staged in a vacant house.  I have had this idea for quite a while, and the venue finally became available.  I have another guy that I partner up with buying units occasionally, so we bought a few good "antique" units together and staged this house with some really good stuff, no junk!

We hauled approximately five trailer loads of stuff to this vacant house.  We pulled the cabinet doors off all the cabinets in the kitchen and we pulled the pins and removed every interior door (except the hall bathroom) in the house and stacked them all in the master bathroom.  We strategically placed boxes and newspaper for wrapping stuff in the master bath and right outside the garage.  We had a bunch of nice bags (found in a storage unit of course!)with rope handles to bag up customers sales. 

We set up a number of tents outside, and filled the garage with tools.  We set up our cashier right outside the garage door and set up a heater and some of the smaller items so the cashier could keep an eye on them.  We then proceeded to stage the entire house (approx. 1800 sq. ft.).

We set up one bedroom with an antique bed, sewing machine, writers desk, antique carved chest, etc.  We set up the living room with some really nice furniture and throw rugs, lamps, tables, etc.  We set up a table full of nothing but crystal, and had little nik naks spread throughout.  We put a really nice table in the dining room and a bunch of nice china in front of the sliding glass door.   We filled up the Kitchen cabinets with Coca Cola stuff and various glassware.  We had a bunch of large cookie jars we set up around the top of the cabinets and on the counters.  We had the pantry full of corningware and small kitchen appliances.

We set up the office with a desk, chair, computer, and printer.  We also had a nice oak shelf unit and some Ikea cabinets.  We then stuck around 400 DVD's in the oak shelf.  We had folding tables set up all throughout the house.  The master bedroom had a couple of headboard and frame set ups and a bunch of tables and about 800 CD's on a table.  The laundry room had a bunch of ammo, and in the garage we had a bunch of golf stuff, a few firearms, a bunch of tools and camping gear, and various other stuff.  Outside we put some cheaper stuff under a couple of tents, and we both had our trailers there with the doors open and some stuff inside them for sale.

I spent the money to run an ad in the major local newspaper, and of course all over craigslist.  I also had a friend of mine that makes signs make me up a bunch of 18" x 24" Estate Sale signs.  The advertising worked well.......we had customers showing up at 6:45 for an 8 am start time!  When we finally let people in at 7:38, we had a large crowd gathered.  When my partner said "Okay!", it was like being at Wal-Mart on Black Friday! 

To make an already too long story short, we did 5700 on Thursday alone! (Here's a hint for you guys that like to have garage sales.......start them on Thursday, it is typically a VERY good day because not too many people do them on Thursday and you'll be one of the few).  Between Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, we grossed 11K! 

We had three helpers the first day and one on the second and third, plus we paid the guy to spend the night there so we didn't have to worry about theft in an empty house.  I paid for the signs, the newspaper ads, and we bought a few lunches for the helpers.  After it was all said and done, we netted about 4900.00 each.  It was a lot of work, but I would (and AM!) do it again in a heartbeat!

And, just to clarify why Estate Sale and not a Garage Sale?  First, it's cold and rainy, and pretty much, garage sale season is over until spring.  Second, I go to a lot of garage and estate sales myself.  I have noticed from a lot of the sales I go to and sales I have had, that people really want stuff super cheap at garage sales, but for some reason they expect to pay more at an estate sale, and tend to not bargain as hard.  I do (and will continue to do so) hold many garage sales, but when the opportunity presents itself again, I will definitely do another estate sale. 

Any questions?  Comments?  Feel free to ask anything.  Thanks for reading this long post!

Storage Wars was definitely more realistic than Auction Hunters, but they still made more money on their units than the "average" buyer is going to routinely find.  They are both good entertainment though, and I'll probably continue to watch both, I'm addicted!

The guys with the money do run up units on the new guys, I saw it earlier this week out on one of the big auction runs.  One new guy ran up two of the "regulars" on a unit, and they got pissed and said they weren't going to let him get a cheap one for the rest of the day.  He (new guy) ended up buying a unit for 1500 bucks toward the end of the day.  I think he overpaid, but he seems to be happy with it.