Unit 17: A Soap Opera

Wow, long time no post! I plan to get a couple of posts in here over the next few days ... some good stories to tell.

First, about our last unit. Our pace lately has been 1 unit a month, towards the end of the month. The best auctions in our area are all clustered at month's end, so I make sure to get them on my schedule. We'd go more often, but frankly have run out of space for storing stuff so until we can move out some of the goods, we've got little space for new finds.

On September 23rd, there was the usual series of auctions for the day, with a new one added on at 8:30 in the small city of Marlboro, about 20 minutes from my house. I believe there were 14 units up for sale. My brother met me there. The first unit was "tossed," meaning it was clear the owner of the unit had come in, taken what he valued, and left the rest to be taken care of by someone else. There were lots of opened boxes in the front, tossed around, half empty or completely empty. A pass. I think it went for $50. The first unit we saw that was interesting had a washer/dryer combo, refrigerator, boxes and two tool holders like you see mechanics with at garages. It ended up going for about $100 more than our limit. So, we kept on going. Most of the units were being bought by a woman who I recalled chatting up about 6 months at another auction. She owns a second hand store in Rhode Island, so she was here picking up goods for the store.

Eventually, we came to a unit that was about 10 X 10 and pretty filled. I saw some furniture in the back that was interesting and a reel-to-reel tape deck and wanted it. I have fallen in love with older stereo equipment following the set of 1960 tube pieces we found a few units ago. My brother and I agreed on a limit and I only went $75 over that limit in order to get it. Here's what it looked like before we really got into the "dig,"

After buying this unit, we went on to the next auction and didn't buy anything. We skipped the rest because each had only 1 or 2 units up for sale and we thought our time would be better spent cleaning this unit out.

The boxes in this unit mostly contained records (as in 12" LPs) or papers. I've gone through just about every box and am amazed at the sheer magnitude of unpaid bills a family can accumulate. At the bottom of one box, I found a gold bracelet! That, and a few small boxes of other gold jewelry I found in another box comprise the first gold we've ever found in a unit. Woo hoo! The gold will more than pay for the unit, so everything else is profit.

And the everything else is turning out to be interesting. We found an old 44-key keyboard that we thought wouldn't have any value because it was clearly so old. Turns out it's from 1979 and is actually desirable and going for $300 - $500 on eBay. The tape deck is worth about $100. There's also a double cassette deck machine and a direct drive turntable. Some clothes can go into our booth for small dollars, primarily to pay the rent. The records are probably worth $1-$2 a piece and we have over 300. Yesterday, I found a kitschy 1950's green ceramic panther with a light bulb in the back. These used to sit on top of old-style console tv's, I believe. Should pull in some decent money as well.

There's also a steam cleaner, a weight bench and some other random stuff. Oddly, the furniture I was interested in that prompted me to buy the unit was all pretty junky and we took all off to the dump. I think the only pieces of furniture we saved were a few occasional tables (including the leather-topped one you can see at the top of the pile in a photo) and a bookcase that needs to be reglued before selling. (Bookcases seem always to sell.)

When cleaning out the boxes, I started looking through some of the correspondence I found. Primarily, I hoped a birthday card might contain a forgotten-about gift card or money. And, what I read prompted me to read more. I found quite a soap opera in the papers. The center of all the drama was a woman I'll call Susan.

Susan had previously divorced a husband and had a daughter from that relationship. She was now living with a guy named Joe. I found lots of short, hand-written notes from Joe to Sue exclaiming how much he loved her. One sad note said he was in jail and he was writing, pleading with her to come and bail him out. He said he loved her but all she loved was the pipe.

Sue herself had plenty of contact with the police. We found some id's for her indicating she was a member of the Las Vegas police in the 80s. Then I found what I can only describe as a rap sheet, listing her many run-ins with the local law enforcement. DUI, assault with a deadly weapon, assault on a police officer, a good 10 or 12 arrests over the years. Yikes!

Further on in my box review, I found a number of condolence cards to Susan following Joe's death. Then, I found a marriage certificate documenting a 2006 marriage between Susan and another woman, Linda. In the same bunch of documents, I found 2 letters from Linda to Susan professing her love and wondering why Susan didn't love her.

Finally, and this really bothered me, I found correspondence between Susan and a law office. Susan had used a lawyer to recover a $640 debt her daughter owed her! There were a number of letters from the law office passing on $40 weekly checks from the daughter to repay the debt. Honestly, who does this kind of thing to her own daughter?

So that's the story of unit #17. I suppose Susan didn't value any of these papers. Why else would she have left them to molder in a storage locker she didn't even bother to keep current on?

Unit 13: Small and Profitable

A week ago Thursday, I took off on a day of spelunking. On tap were 2 auctions in Worcester, 1 in Shrewsbury, wrapping up with an auction in Northboro. These are all about 30 minutes from my house and even closer to my brother, so he could join me for a clean-out if I found a good unit. My challenge was that he was helping BW's girlfriend move the next day, so we needed to move everything out of the unit that day. You typically only have 24 hours to get everything removed. So, I was looking for a unit without much stuff but that still looked profitable.

On this day, we finally got some summer weather. The temps got into the 80s (F), so it was quite warm wandering around the pavement at the storage unit sites, going from unit to unit.

The first auction had 9 units up for sale. Most of them had nothing appealing. In fact, one unit didn't sell at all it was so unappealing to the gathered crew of about 30. One of the last units was interesting. It was small, had a large electronic keyboard and you could see a guitar case peaking out from behind some bins. I was willing to pay up to $175, but it was over $350 when I walked away to scope out the next unit.

At the next location, only two units were available. The first contained some nice looking furniture, but too much for my brother and I to handle that afternoon, so I didn't bother to bid.

In Shrewsbury, it seemed the bidders lost interest in the units. They were going for very little. The fourth of 5 was interesting. It was a funny-shaped unit, taking a turn at the end. You could see a few boxes and a couple of bikes from the door. The auctioneer went in and said there was a bedroom set inside and no mattress (mattresses cost to dispose of, so that was a bonus). I was the only bidder and picked it up for $50!

This is the time of year to sell bikes and I'm still surprised no one else was interested in the unit. I sold the two bikes (one is the girl's bike above - a Bratz Diamond Dazzler) for a total of $190. The other bike was a virtually new mountain bike. I found online that they sell new for about $100, so I listed it on Craigslist for $85. Got a lot of calls and emails on it and had a buyer lined up. He didn't show, so was going to offer it to the next caller. Unbelievably, when I told an interested party that I had other potential buyers in front of her, she counteroffered $150! As you can imagine, she took it home.

The furniture, in a french provincial style, has some wear to it, but it's well-made and solid. I can't find any information online about the manufacturer, Paoletti Period Furniture, unfortunately. I'm putting it up on Craigslist today. Wish me luck for a quick sale!

Now this is the way to make a profit in storage units. I'm happy.

Units 9 - 12: Good Stuff

 

One Saturday, about 3 weeks ago, my brother, RC, his friend, BW, and I went to a moving company auction in an affluent town nearby. I was very interested in this auction because there were over 30 vaults up for sale, so I figured we'd find some items worth buying.

Unlike a regular storage unit auction where they cut the lock and open the unit a few minutes before the bidding begins so you get only a few moments to review the contents, all the vaults were open and viewable when we arrived for registration. The furniture was pretty much all wrapped up in moving pads, though, so information was still limited. The up close review got a little too up in some cases ... One vault entirely filled with boxes had actually had a few opened by attendees! One contained Christmas stuff, which you find in most lockers, but the other, tantatlizingly, had a baseball card collection inside.

We bought 4 vaults, and we're on our way to making a profit overall on them. The last unit contained only a dining room table and 6 chairs. We brought these to the furniture consignment shop we use and they sold it almost right away. Unfortunately, we disagreed with the price they listed it for, thinking it should be higher. Since they wouldn't raise the price, we were going to pick it up and sell it ourselves on Craigslist, but, until we were able to pick it up, I let them keep it actively listed. So, that resulted in a net loss for that unit. The second vault was jammed with furniture that was wrapped, so we really only a got a good look at the first piece. It was a lovely, antique dresser that suggested the rest of the furniture would be equally lovely. D'oh! All the rest was sort of junky, laminated office furniture and couple of 20-year old office side chairs. We've got the dresser in for an auction and are listing the rest of the items on craigslist. We're trying to stay away from the consignment shop since we're developing other routes for selling furniture that don't involve having half the sale going to the shop.

The third unit was mostly visible before the auction so we went in with eyes wide open. It contained 5 wicker chairs, a nice patio table, a new Toto toilet in boxes and 3 shelving units still in boxes. Additionally, we discovered in the very back, wrapped in protective paper, a 3' x 5' glass table top without a base. This glass is 3/4" thick and has a special edging design. Looking online, similar table tops sell brand new for over $400. We haven't listed it yet, but expect to get decent money for this little bonus. Everything else in the unit sold quickly, except for the patio table, which we decided to keep for ourselves.

The first unit we bought turns out to have the greatest profit potential. From what we could see, we knew it contained a dining room set but weren't sure if there was anything else in there, since there were a ton of wrapped items. It turned out to contain the heaviest furniture RC and BW ever had to schlepp anywhere! It contained all the pieces of another dining room set: table with 3 leaves, 6 chairs, sideboard and china cabinet that sits on top of the sideboard. (Photos at top of post.)

Because the garage was so jammed with stuff, we had to cram in the dining room set and didn't really have a chance to examine it in great detail. First and foremost, we had to repair the seats on the chairs. One seat was missing entirely and some of the others were pretty stained. RC is taking the lead on that, and is almost done with the work. Since we haven't been able to advertise the dining room set yet, combined with the garage cramming, I hadn't yet investigated the set to find the manufacturer. Yesterday, we moved some of the furniture, including the table, sideboard and china cabinet over to a storage unit I've rented and got to examine the furniture more closely. We found in the sideboard a manufacturer's mark. Turns out the set was made by Bassett Furniture, which is a high-quality company. We're still investigating the exact Bassett collection, since it's discontinued, but using prices from a similar collection on the Bassett website, this probably cost about $6,000 new! I'm hoping we can get $1,000 or so for this set.

One interesting feature of these auctions that finally crystallized for me here: boxes are like catnip to buyers. These vaults were relatively small and very few contained a lot of boxes. Most of them contained furniture. The vaults that had the most interest and went for the most money were the ones that were just boxes! The one that had the two open boxes I mentioned went for over $700, more than double what I would have paid for it. Furniture is heavy and not so easy to deal with for most people. Boxes are a big mystery and might contain the elusive high-value items that we all hope to find. I like boxes too, but having gone through many that contained a lot of junk, I'm pretty skeptical about them now.

Units 6, 7 and 8: One Big Buy in Leominster




The plastic Jesus was a find from a box in Unit 8 (all the other junk you can see is mine)

 

Seltzer bottles from Unit 7

The boxes from Unit 7 take up one half of my garage!



Leominster is in central Mass, about 35 minutes from my house. I went to high school nearby and back then there was a billboard on Route 2 (divided highway that runs through Leominster) announcing proudly that Leominster was the "Pioneer Plastic City." Back then, in the early 1970s, we laughed at the name. Why would you want to celebrate your history as a plastics manufacturer? Surprisingly, they had a new and improved billboard up proclaiming their pioner plastic status when I drove down Route 2 to the auction.

I was very much looking forward to this auction because it was at a moving company and about 30 units were expected to go. As I drove up to the building where the auction was, though, I saw that the building was practically falling down, in a state of horrible disrepair. D'oh! Why would anyone store anything there?

Turns out the building was being torn down and the moving company needed to get the storage units cleared out. This wasn't a place for self-storage but, instead, where the moving company would store things for clients whose housing was in transition.

We were looking forward to lots of furniture being on the block here and the first 8 units certainly lived up to that as they were practically all furniture with barely a box in sight. In fact, the vast majority of the 31 lots up for sale contained loads of furniture. I was very interested in 2 of the first 8 and got both of them. As we were walking away from the second unit, another buyer offered to buy the large jewelry display case we'd just bought. RC and I jumped at the offer as we had both been wondering where we'd get rid of it and figured it was going to be heavy and difficult to move (it was at least a dozen feet long).

We bid on some other units but were not able to pick any others up until the 3rd to last unit. It only had a few pieces of furniture and the rest of the unit was all moving boxes. RC was really interested in this unit, so we bid on it. I figured the boxes would hold items of value since they were nice moving company boxes and there'd be a variety of items in them as well. So, we picked this unit up as the last of the day.

After settling up with the auctioneer, RC and I decided to look over the furniture then we'd fill his minivan and trailer and my Element with as many boxes as we could haul. (We'd rent a UHaul trailer for a big move a few days later.) Only a few boxes were in the first two units so most of what we loaded up were boxes from the last unit. Each one was labeled clothes. Ruh-roh! I figured as we got deeper into the unit when we cleaned everything out when we came back with the UHaul, we'd find boxes labeled "living room" and "dining room," etc.

Well, no such luck. Virtually every one of the 50+ boxes from that unit was labeled clothes. Sometimes, the label was "living room clothes" or "dining room clothes." We've been through 7 of these boxes so far and the person who lived in the house these came from was clearly a hoarder. Most of the clothes were still in store bags (unfortunately, Kmart, Target and Sears rather than Nordstroms and Neiman Marcus). Most of them still have tags on them, so they're new and unworn. I've come across 12 unused red handbags and at least 5 red winter coats. About a dozen Jaclyn Smith skirts with tags as well. And so on. Clearly, we'll make money selling the new clothes on eBay, but there will be a lot of work getting them listed.

Bottom line: the furniture wasn't quite as nice as it appeared from a distance (you don't get a close look at anything before bidding) so we won't net as much from the furniture as I'd estimated. The boxes didn't contain as high-value items as I'd expected, but I anticipate we'll make a lot of money from the clothes when all is said and done. It's lucky I have lots of time to get these listing posted!

Unit 5: The Art of Overbidding

Actually, it turns out that this is one art I don't need to perfect. I've already got the overbidding skill down pat!

RC and I went to an auction in Worcester (good-sized city in central MA) where there were 14 units up for auction. As you might imagine, this generated a big crowd. The first unit was clearly junk and it went for far more than we thought it was worth. A lovely unit went for $1450, far above our cash on hand. We bid on a few items but kept getting outbid. With only a few units left, a promising looking locker with furniture, well packed boxes and storage tubs came up. A couple that we'd seen at other auctions who clearly had been in the business for a while were bidding on it, so they saw value in it.

Unfortunately, RC and I hadn't had a chance to check in before the auction on this unit began. We typically look at the unit individually then discuss our reactions to it ... buy? pass? if buy, what's our max? We talk about the items of value we saw, since we both see different things, and the junk that'd prompt a trip to the dump (especially with a premium for mattresses and tvs). As a result, in this case, we hadn't collectively decided how much to bid.

So that couple was bidding away and I decided to join in on the fun. I thought there was value in the furniture I could see, and knew we'd find some value in the boxes and tubs.

Well, turns out the furniture was all junk. Cheaply made, worn and dirty. Off to the dump. The glass-topped tables we saw had broken glass tops and the glass to replace was about as much as I expected we'd net on them. Large DJ speakers were in tough shape and one was missing a horn speaker. The washing machine was beat up. We did find tools, a working Wii and games, and an Xbox and games. So, there's some value here but not enough to make up for the amount I paid.

Bottom line: I looked at those items through rose-colored glasses because I really wanted to buy a unit. I need to be a bit more skeptical when I'm spelunking. There are always other auctions and other units.

Unit 4: Very Interesting!

Our 4th unit was purchased at a storage place only 8 minutes from my house. That's fortunate, because it contained a lot of stuff that needed to be brought home for sorting, including the false breasts shown above.

When we went to the auction, we found out there was only 1 unit available. When the door was opened, it looked good. I could see a bedroom set in good shape, including 2 dressers and 2 bedside tables. We could see sporting equipment and lots of tubs containing goods.

We took the unit for $375. I had figured the furniture we could see would cover the cost of the unit and the remainder of the goods would be profit. As it turns out, the bedroom set actually was in good shape and, combined with a recliner we found, we will more than cover the cost of the unit if it all sells at the consignment shop we took it to.

My brother and his friend were at the unit loading the first trailer full of stuff when I received a text, "he was a drag queen." All in all in the unit, we found two sets of false breasts, 9 wigs, 3 makeup cases, 2 pairs of thigh-high boots, about a dozen high heeled shoes (actually, maybe more), corsets and other undergarments, and all manner of spangly and slinky outfits. Since they're used, at first I didn't think they had any value. But, the more that we thought about it, there's so much stuff here, we could probably pick up some money selling it off in lots. They're going up on eBay over the next week.

This was a good unit ... clean and well-packed. We should realize a decent profit from the furniture, clothes, drag queen items and so on that we found. It was good to have this under our belts after the horror of unit 2.

Unit 3: Quick and Not Too Interesting

We picked this unit up for $50. It didn't have too much in it and my first bid took it. There were some decent, clean women's clothes hanging in a box that I'm going to take to a clothing consignment shop. The main interest for me was the furniture - 2 tall hutches for a dining room and a sideboard. I'll be painting the hutches to maximize their sale price. Unfortunately, the sideboard was missing some drawers so we'll be using it as a sorting table for reviewing our purchases.

Unit 2: What a Bummer!

The irony of our second unit purchase is that I was so excited about this auction and  looking forward to it for weeks. The auction was in Brookline, a city next to Boston that has a mixture of nice apartments and well-to-do areas and there were more than 10 units up for sale. I looked up the storage business online and even the building it was in was interesting - built as a storage company in the 1880's, it was actually on the national register of historic places.

When we got to the auction, to make matters more interesting, Allen and Ton from Auction Hunters were there. Apparently, this year's show has them traveling around the US going to auctions rather than staying in California, their normal stomping grounds.

Most of the units turned out to be junky. About halfway through, a unit came up that was about 10' X 10' and jammed to the gills with boxes. We didn't see any furniture inside. We decided to bid on it and picked the unit up for $150.

Ton and Allen picked up 3 units, including one that was decidedly creepy. It was a huge room, I'd guess 20' X 20', and it contained 8 large Home Depot boxes along one wall and about 30 black pastic bags arranged in two piles. I hope these make it onto one of their shows as I'm very, very curiuos about what's in those bags.

When my brother paid for the unit, he found out that the monthly rent was $200 and the owner had been $3440 behind. As we cleaned out the room, it became clear the stuff had been put there in 2000, so they'd paid over $20,000 in rent before they stopped paying (actually, probably less, as the monthly rental cost presumably changed over the last 10 years). If someone is going to pay thousands of dollars to store something, wouldn't you expect it to have value? Well, in this case, you'd be wrong ... horribly wrong. We were in shock as we dug into this unit. Not one thing in it was worth selling. Maybe there had been good stuff but the owner had removed it because most of the boxes had been ruptured and rifled through. The junkiness was awe-inspiring.

Not only was there nothing to sell, but the unit cost us money to dispose of the 6 tvs and 3 computer monitors we found in it. TVs and monitors cost $35 each to dispose of at the dump.

So a couple of lessons learned: 1) Brookline not worth revisiting and 2) when the unit looks junky from the outside, don't waste your money or time on it.

Our First Unit Purchase

A few days after our first auction, we planned a visit to 3 auctions all close to one another. The middle auction was cancelled as everyone had paid their back rent. The first auction was in Chelmsford, an exurb with a relatively high median income (I hope this would make for good quality goods). The storage place was very well set up. The first unit was a large one outside, in the pouring rain. We looked it over and I liked it. Not too much stuff left, primarily some good looking furniture that I figured we could take to the consignment shop. We took it with a $250 bid. The third and fourth units were interesting but they ended up going for more than we were prepared to pay.

RC and his friend BW (who now comes to all the auctions with us and without whom we'd be screwed because he's strong, industrious and good-natured) cleaned out the unit the next morning and took the furniture over to the consignment shop. If all the items sell, our 50% take will more than equal our investment in the unit. That's lucky because there won't be much to make from the remaining stuff.

All in all, the unit should yield a small profit and took very little time and effort to clean out and dispose of the stuff. We were pleased.