I always like to see the facility cut the lock right before your eyes. The last auction I went to the owner was telling me and the rest of the crowd what was in each unit before they opened the door. It really rubbed me the wrong way. She said stuff like "This one doesn't have much in it." or "This has some interesting pieces of art in the back." I doubt I will go back there again. On the other hand two local facilities cut the lock right in front of you and every month they advertise 10 or more units each. I will not miss an auction here. My advice for storage facility owners is if you dont already, cut the lock in front of your buyers!

Today there was a unit that peaked everyone's interest. It is a very large facility in a nicer part of town. When they opened the door to the unit, there were 15+ LARGE boxes, and they were all neatly stacked and taped shut. There were absolutely no markings or clues on anything as to the contents. Of course this peaked my interest, but I didn't want to blow too much money taking a shot in the dark. I did give one of the boxes closer to the door a little push, and it felt very light like it was full of clothes or bedsheets or something like that. I bid up to the $300 mark and then decided to get out. I think the girl who won it got the unit for $720. Afterwards the crowd started begging her to open one of the boxes. She agreed and cut one box open, and it was completely full of stuffed animals. These were like the type you would win at a carnival or six flags. Over $700 bucks worth of stuffed animals. How do you get rid of something like that?

What a jerk! Hope that guy isn't from the ATL area

Here are some links to some of the auctions I have listed from this unit. Check them out!

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I bundled the watches together and put them in my antique booth for $100 since they all needed batteries and I wasnt even sure if they worked. I put the china in my booth for $45.


Also, as an update I found an online appraisal company that does appraisals starting around $11 bucks that I submitted pics of my vase to. I will let you know if they actually knew anything about the vase. If so it could be a valuable tool for determining the value. Their website is antique-appraise.com. Anyone ever used online appraisal companies before?

anyone?

Hey guys. Thursday I went to an auction with a friend of mine and when I arrived I was surprised to find out that it was a silent auction. There were 6 units up for bids, and they were all packed full of stuff, except mine. My unit was probably a 5x6, the rest of them were at least 10x 20. The main reason I was interested in mine was the fact that all of it's contents would fit in one truckload. The only thing of value you could see from the door was the 2.5 ft tall ceramic vase (which turned out to be from 1962), the rest was all in large rubbermaid totes. So basically it was a gamble from the get go. I wrote $120 and turned it in to the auctioneer, and by surprise I won. When I started unloading everything I quickly realized that the unit belonged to a large black man. When I started looking through the tubs I quickly noticed this guy had some style. There were 4 totes full of clothes, but these clothes all had dry cleaner tags on it and were folded nicely. ALL THE CLOTHES WERE SIZE XXXL and was top of the line designers like FUBU, Sean Jean, PHAT PHARM and stuff like that. There were 7 pairs of these pants which sell for around $100 new, there were tons of real nice button up shirts and matching denim jacket tops to some of these pants. I pulled 6 size XL jerseys all nearly brand new, 2 were hockey jerseys for the Chicago Blackhawks with no name on the back, one Atlanta Braves jersey (hockey style jersey), one #12 Grambling Throwback Jersey for football great Doug Willams. There were 3 brand new pairs of Stacy Adams men's dress shoes. These shoes have never been worn, they still had tissue paper stuffed inside them from where the guy bought them. There was an 18k gold necklace with a zirconium pendant, and 7 men's Kenneth Cole watches of various styles. There was a xerox copy machine that works like new and even had paper loaded in it.

The shoes sell for $50-150 each pair, the jerseys are going for $50-$80 each on ebay, the watches average $50 each, and the pants and shirts will easily sell on craigslist for around $500 for everything. The copy machine is $40-$50, the gold necklace is worth around $100. All in all I have made a killing with this unit! I am still trying to determine the value of the ceramic vase, if anyone knows anything about that please respond in the "help determining value" thread. I sent some pictures of it into a website that gives free appraisals, but who knows if I even get a response. It is units like this that get you hooked on buying storage lockers!

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