The unit was at a private place that only has auctions a few times a year and there was only about 10 people all regulars or it probably would have gone for alot more.

It was around 20x20, no display cases, the jewerly (boxes) were on one side & the other side was random household items also on shelving. All in all not a whole lot of stuff considering the size.

You can't sell that skull. You need it to stop the end of the world in December.

Sadly the best thing about the unit was it gave me something to mess around with for a few weeks. I end up taking about 150 30 gallon trash bags full of moldy junk to the dump. I got some interesting stuff, the first few things that come to mind, a superman record player from the 70's, a fully functional mini-sewing maching, a brand new sew machine, some neat old Radio shack rc cars & about $700 in jewely. Would have been a bust without the jewerly.

I will make money, but boy was the mold & mildew intense. I had to throw away most of the stuff because of it. There was lots of books from 1890-1920 but most of them were destroyed by the elements.

I do this for fun, I have a full time job, I tend to only buy units that look interesting, that are big, full and clean. I donate the cheap stuff, give away stuff to friends & keep the really interesting stuff. The tax break helps & I try to sell enough to cover the cost of the unit.

I started buying 6 months ago and in that time:

Spent $6200 on 18 units (average of about $350/unit)
Sold ~$5800

I have kept/giving away to friends about 2k worth of stuff, have about 2k in inventory of stuff I need to sell, and donated god knows how much.

Seeing others peoples numbers are interesting though, using MovieMan's numbers of 1.8, to achieve, say, the median US average of 45k,

$45,000 profit / .8 = $56,250 would have to be spent on units.

You would have to sell the stuff from those units for over $100,000. Thats about $2000/week in sales every week of the year.

The number of units one would have to buy depends I guess. From what I have seen the average price where I live is close to what I pay, about $400/unit. Meaning one would have to buy 140 units a year.

Again, I do this as a hobby, I spend on average 5/hours a week messing around with this. But I often wonder how the people who do this for a living make a living, and, in my mind, the numbers don't add up.

I bought a unit that had been rented for 14 years and it looks like they haven't been in the unit since. Everything is atleast 14 years old but most of it is from the 70's and 80's. It was packed 8x20 about 6 feet tall from the frOnt to the back. I have only gone though about 10% and have already made back the $500 I paid for it in jewerly alone.

Has anyone else bought lockers that had been stored for a long time? If so how did they work out? At $100 a month min the people would have paid over $15,000 in rent, that was the only reason I bid.