Having watched Storage Wars and Auction Hunters way too often recently, my brother-in-law and I decided to use a good portion of our day off to check out some storage auctions around Houston. It was a pretty interesting experience to say the least. I read up on some storage auction secrets and was ready to become a modern-day Fred Sanford.
Here are a few tips from my own experience today:
- Storage Wars and Auction Hunters are probably drawing people out of the woodwork, so expect bidding to be fierce right now. The auctioneer was telling us that the crowd today was about three times as many as they would consider normal.
- Many auctioneers will do several auctions on a single day, one immediately after the other. This means that the published times on auctions later in the day are just guides and bidding will likely start well after that.
- Don’t expect to see lots of really cool units like you do on the storage auction shows. Most of the units we saw today had average quality furniture and old appliances. There was nothing really special that could be seen in any of the units. The shows have the luxury of creative editing, real life auctions do not.
- Don’t try to talk about something you saw on one of the shows with anyone at the auction. Based on the comments I overheard today most of the regulars think the shows are ridiculous, and when they aren’t bragging about their own finds from past auctions they are badmouthing the storage auction shows. I think many of the regulars are also unhappy about the newbies the shows are bringing out, which makes the auction process longer and creates more bidding competition.
Ultimately we didn’t buy anything as the bidding went higher than we wanted, but it was still a cool experience and I would do it again. Next time I may try to find a small independent facility that might not have the crowd that a large chain does. I might need to read up on some storage auction secrets first, though.