I just moved to NC from Costa Mesa, where I lived since 1987. I am a SoCal native making my living at all kinds of auctions since 1981, and I NEVER saw Dave at any auctions other than Storage units. From 1998 to 2010, I specialized in high tech equipment. If Dave didn't go to the DotCom auctions, he was never a serious auction buyer, because we killed it in that period. I put 150k miles on a Suburban and a 16' Wells Cargo trailer during that period. So, Dave is NOT an auction whale for sure.

As for his store, I agree his prices were high and not that much traffic. I believe he did $1.7 million in a year, but with his overhead he could not have made much net profit, as Darrel pointed out in the one shoe at the old Sahara sitting around the table. His Dave Hester Auctions in Orange just sold off all the remaining inventory from Newport Consignments (Rags to Riches, same store) that they didn't feed into the new auction biz. Word in the local auction scene is that he is burning through cash, and Billy Humphrey's South Coast Auctions pickers will not let him get a lot of deals to feed auctions every two weeks since Billy has an auction every Wed night. I had two auction locations (operated one at a time), doing sales every two weeks and then every three to four weeks in a newer larger location, and it is a TON of work, so Dave has his work cut out for him going heads up against Billy. A bunch of smalls and locker junk will not feed that beast, you would need probably $500k a month in sales to make it work at
the high costs in Cali.

I think Dave is mostly talk, like many people in Newport Beach that spout off about their money, but are in debt up to their eyeballs. People with real money don't act that way, cause they really have it.

Good luck to all of you this week.
J.R.

I suspect that weekend auctions aren't common because the bottom line is that the storage auctions are a normal part of buiness. The auctioneer is in business, the storage owner is in business, and the regular bidders are in business.

Also, weekends would be the time when many storage tenants are accessing their units. I'd rather imagine a hoard of auction seekers would have a rather distrupting effect on the normal activities of Saturday morning at the units.