I used to go to these storage auctions about 10 years ago, before the storage wars hype came up. Wasn't worth it for me. For one thing, you have to get all the stuff out of the storage container by a certain time (they want it all cleared out so they can rent the locker again), so you have to have a garage or some place to store all the stuff while you sort it out. Plus you have to rent a truck to haul it if you already don't have a truck or 4 by 4. Then you need to have the time to go through all the stuff, categorize it and then put the ones you don't want out on craigslist or ebay. You also need to find a place to dump the rest of the junk since we can only dump 1 trash container at a time. Guess if you have the time you could probably make some money off the auctions but for the rest of us we don't have the time or resources (storage) to hold the stuff before selling.
With the storage tv shows people started going to those auctions hoping to make a mint but most of them contain basically "junk" but people are still bidding for them. In Honolulu they don't even open up the storage locker and if they do they don't allow anybody inside to look at stuff. All sight unseen but people are still bidding for it (stupidly) and I think it is mostly because of those tv shows. People think they will make bundle of money off it. As one other poster, I was at an auction, one container was totally filled but when the guy started opening up the boxes and bags it was all junk (older books from the 70's, broken furniture and tv's, old computers and basically stuff a normal person would have trashed). It was funny because everybody started bidding and the amount went up and up and eventually sold for $1500, all because the container was totally filled. The buyer then was stuck, he had to pay for hauling the junk to the dump or goodwill since the storage facility didn't want it dumped there.
I'm kind of surprised, there seems to be those storage places popping up everywhere, you would think that there would be a glut by now and they have to drop prices but the monthly rentals are (to me) outrageous. I'm a junk collector (not as bad as a hoarder but close) and there is no way that I would rent a storage locker, it will only cause me to buy more stuff and then still have a space problem. Now if I want more stuff I will have to get rid of some stuff first.
We used to have police auctions, confiscated stuff and recovered stuff. Was great because at least you can look at the items before you bid. I also picked up the recovered bikes and mopeds and fixed them up for my use or sold them. had some good stuff for cheap price. Unfortunately they also had storage problems and so outsourced them and shipped them to cali where they would go on online auctions and we never had a chance because we would have had to pay the high shipping prices to bring them back to hawaii. not worth it.
