When I think back on the biggest scores I've personally seen at our auctions (I spent most of my time as a self storage property manager) I always go back to "Bill" the HVAC specialist that buys and resells storage auctions with his wife in their spare time.
This particular day, Bill came down to the facilities on his own - we always stagger our auctions and run them on the same day so that our motivated bidders can hit our different locations in town.
Anyway, Bill walked the earlier auction with all the rest of the bidders and saw the 5 or so units we had up for sale at that time. Most of them with drive-ups but few of them were even close to being packed to capacity - most had a lot of empty space and junky trashbags full of clothes.
When everyone got to the last unit, I knew there was going to be some bidding action back and forth because when I prepped the unit I saw it was absolutely packed, a 10x10 drive up with barely any remaining space.
In terms of what was visible: there was a medium square safe, several crates of recreational swimming equipment, scuba stuff, pool toys, etc. Two different video game consoles, crate upon crate of dvds and video games. You couldn't see much beyond that but from the looks of the front of the unit you could tell it was going to be valuable.
Luckily for Bill, he was the most experienced buyer there, and no one kept up with him past the $345 mark, which he ultimately claimed the unit for (keep in mind this is in Hawaii where the prices for everything are always higher). Bill paid, then started unloading everything. In about an hour, he popped into the office to say he had found two worm-drive skill saws that were brand new, and that he was confident he had made his money back right there.
Turned out the unit was a family storage - plenty of video games and video game consoles, 3 boxes of dvds and vhs, books, clothes, swimming gear, and then all of Dad's power tools. Yummy. He said he was up about $1200 on that unit after a week of selling everything off.
