I went to two auctions on Tuesday the 6th with a crowd of only 15 at the first one and five lockers up for sale. Of the 15 buyers, five were regulars....all with enough money to make it a contest. Only one of the regulars bought a locker as the better ones (but not great) went for twice what they should have.
A promising 5 x 10 showed a guitar case up front, two old record players and neatly stacked boxes which might have held other older items. I would have gone $300 but it went for $575. Turned out the guitar was not in the case.
*****
Second place the crowd had grown to 25 with same 5 regulars in the mix. Six lockers with the best one saved for last. It had 3 interestings rectangular (larger than foot locker) boxes squarely wrapped in blue or silver tarps. Looked like they wanted to protect those from the elements.
A regular got it for $350 and was nice enough to let me watch him go through it. The largest trunk revealed a top level tray with.....old linens but nothing worth selling. The bottom contained....more blankets, etc. I guess the tarp was to keep all this crap dry. Also contained two large artillary shells with carved figures...."trench art" but they were from 1975 so perhaps not as valuable as WWI or WWII. Small jewelery box contained....6 audio cassettes! So pretty much a bust.
Next wrapped box was a standard size footlocker which contained ..... not too much. One sterling sugar bowl, forget what else, but not valuable for the bulk. Two more footlockers....nada. One of those contained legal documents from decades ago...guess it was importnant to the former locker owner.
One large hand-made box with maybe 10 rolls of electrical cable of some kind with connectors on each end. Turned out it was for a solar system. There was a "disconnect" breaker box which takes the electric company panel out of the equation when the solar system is engaged. No solar panels in the locker.
Miscellaneous tools, chop saw, old washer/dryer....he'll do ok but I was glad it wasn't me that got the locker. The mystery boxes were a bust.