One unit had an entire truckload of frame wood, to make custom picture frames. Some very pretty carved pieces, some unfinished, some stained or finished. Hundreds of pounds of the stuff. The owner had a frame shop at some point. Probably could have found a buyer but it was taking up too much space so we listed it on Craigslist for free and a non english speaking guy came and took as much as he could fit in his truck bed. No clue what he did with it. Probably burned it as kindling for all I know. Took the remaining pieces to the dump. There have been a few things like that over the years that probably had value but we just couldn't hang on to it for long because of storage issues. Another one that really makes me cringe, bought an entire estate last year (hoarder/collector woman). Tons of stuff. The woman had lined the walls of her house with bookcases to display all her thousands of trinkets, bookends.....stuff. After boxing up all the smalls we were faces with all the bookcases. Each load out contained a few. We had to rent storage to store the vast majority of the stuff from the estate temporarily and were quickly filling them up so we would bring the empty bookcases home after unloading the trailer at storage and leave them at the front of our yard with free signs. Each day they would disappear and we would replace them with more. The last 5-6 didn't disappear so we broke them up and dumped them. Soon after that we were attending a local auction and they had a couple bookcases just like the ones we were giving away. We laughed that they were going to try to get someone to buy simple common wooden bookcases like ones we gave away. Good luck with that. Yeah....they got $140 each for them. What do you know...Mid Century Modern....Teak I think.....bummer. Since then I've seen similar ones at auctions several times and they always sell for a good amount of money. Live and learn I guess...

Maybe vermeil, gold plated over silver, and they didn't rub deep enough to get through the gold coating.

I donate all clean basic non designer clothing. Glassware, dishes, basically all the boring common household stuff, most books (after I make sure sure they have no value). Towels, bedding, blankets....The list goes on and on. I take truckloads to the goodwill.

We "Vultures" do feel bad....initially. And there are lots of cases where people lose their units through circumstances that they can't change. After doing it for a while though you come to the conclusion that the vast majority of people that lose their belongings are storing a huge amount of worthless stuff. Sure there are valuables mixed in but if the owners took the time to pick out the important stuff (photos, jewelry, family treasures ...) and got rid of the crap (old furniture, boxes of magazines, old clothes ...) they would not need to rent a unit or maybe instead of a 10x25 for $300 a month they could have rented a little closet size for $75 a month and held onto the important stuff. People need to take a reality check and purge the stuff they don't need. 

You are expected to empty it completely. Many places charge a cleaning deposit and return the deposit to you once they inspect the unit. If you don't empty it you will lose your deposit if you paid one and most likely be banned from that location and possibly any others that are handled by the same auctioneer.

you ask all your storage buying buddies if they have found it and make a deal with them. Or search Craigslist for it. Never pay retail!

Had a good pick this weekend. Picked up a sewing machine at an estate sale for $35.00. Listed it and sold it in two hours for.....$500.00 plus shipping. Woo Hoo!!!