Month’s ago, a friend mentioned something about making money buying the contents out of storage units, and I never really gave it much consideration.  That is, until I started watching episodes of Storage Wars and Auction Hunters, reality shows where cameras follow storage auction attendees as they employ clever tricks and strategies to win repossessed storage units they believe will give them a worthwhile return on their investment.

I’ve only seen a few episodes and already I’m an avid watcher of both shows.  I never knew there could be so much intensity and strategic planning with auction bidding.

Auction attendees only get 5 minutes to peek inside each storage unit.  With so little time to look inside, bidders have to make certain inferences about the value hidden inside a unit based on what they can see in plain site.  This will determine how much a participant is willing to bid to acquire the storage locker.

Serious bidders come prepared with flashlights, and other aids to help them make a better assessment as to what’s inside the lockers they view.  One of the more dramatic bidders on the show brought along a little person on stilts wearing night vision goggles.

Antiques seem to be the hot commodity at storage auctions.  9 times out of 10, the bidders with the most profit on the show are those who have scored a storage locker with one or more antiques.

However, one of the biggest payoffs on the show came from a storage unit containing a locker full of commercial restaurant equipment.  I’ve only seen one such instance of this type of find, compared to dozens of antique finds, so the chances of acquiring such a locker is rare.

You don’t necessarily need a lot of money to participate.  In fact, just tonight I watched an episode of Auction Hunters where a storage locker was purchased for $1 and a profit of more than $300 was made.

Perhaps the worse part of this business is if you don’t have an effective locker assessment strategy, you can end up spending a lot of money to haul away someone’s junk.

If you are going to go into this business professionally, I suggest you know or start learning a little something about antiques.  As for myself, I’m just going to test the waters a little bit before I go diving in, and as I become a little more knowledgeable in the business, start to inch my way into deepers waters.

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