What influenced you to go to your first auction?

You can bet that these days most of the answers to this question will have something to do with the tv shows, but maybe some folks who started doing auctions BEFORE the tv shows will respond too.  It would be nice if the more than 2,900 hundred members who have NEVER posted would say hello.

As for me, I went to my first auction looking for a piece of electronic equipment and not knowing they sold the whole locker as one unit ! (newbie !).  Didn't find what I was looking for, but found something much better and over 9 years and around 400 lockers bought it's been a great trip.

the manager of the place i was storing my stuff at told me they were having one and I should check it out . This was back in 2006. Wound up buying a unit of someone i went to high school with , had a blast going through it and was hooked .

A friend of mine was a regional manager for a storage company. One day he said to me, "You should come to one of our auctions." I said, "auction for what?" The rest is history.

For years when driving by storage facilities I always wondered what they did with deliquent units but never looked into it.  I was raised with the "treasure hunting" mentality, whether it be hitting estate sales or spending hours looking for arrowheads.  About 15 months ago the TV show caught my interest and now auction buying is one of my favorite hobbies. 

About 12 years ago, I was researching a paper in college and was trolling through the legals. This was back before they were easily available online, so I was in my newspaper looking at the legals for info my paper, and I came across a notice for an auction that was being held in Edison, NJ.. went to school at Rutgers. I saw about 15-20 names and unit numbers, contents. I thought it was pretty awesome! I went to the auction 2 weeks later, as a broke college student. Didn't buy anything, but ever since then, I knew that's what I wanted to do. So now I do.. as a broke post college graduate/business owner.

I had heard of the auctions, so as I was nearing retirement, I thought I would observe. There is a facility close to where I worked at the time that had a 3:30PM start time, the end of a multi-city caravan. I sneaked out of work early a couple times. From what I could see, the units went for more than I would have felt comfortable bidding. This was before the TV shows premiered.

By the time I retired, the TV shows had been on a while and I definitely could see the increase in attendance and prices.

I'm currently working on getting rid of the lifetime of accumulation I have in the pole barn and basement. Basically selling the stuff I already own. Maybe by then, the auctions will be more reasonable and I'll have a near empty pole barn to store and work out of.

I had seen a storage auction listing 5 or more years ago when I was looking for some auctions.  At the time my father and I were into equipment auctions.  Those auctions both dried up in the number of auctions a year and the crowd for them grew.  More and more people were looking for used equipment instead of new.  Then one night I saw an advertisement for auction hunters and decided to watch it.  One episode and I was like "oh that is so much bs" but it reminded me of the listing I had seen years back.  So back to searching the net and found my first storage unit auction on a saturday.  Oh what a circus that was.  Anyways - I spent time researching the local auctions, reading articles, books, and of course found this site.  Few months later I bought my first two units and have not looked back.

When I started a dozen people was a large crowd.  Now, only 20 bidders is considered a small crowd.  As for the "regulars" it's about a 3 way split.  You have the old timers that have done this for 10+ years and still do it more as a hobby.  Then you have the 5 year or so thrift store / auction house people -- we have 3 of them.  Then what I consider the "new bloods" of us that have done it for a 1yr - 4yr.  There is only myself and my buddy that are still doing this 18 months or so after we started.  There are a few 6-9 month old people still hanging in.  Mostly the crowd just comes and goes.