…and I think I’ve watched the most horrific drivel in the history of television. I hope all “reality” tv isn’t this bad. I watched the first season of The Real World and the first season of Survivor and that’s about it, so have no idea. All I know is that my friend’s wife was glued to the tv watching an episode.
Here are my questions, that I suspect were answered at some point: I assume that the actual lockers’ contents belonged to someone who stopped coming and disappeared. Is this common? Isn’t it more likely that the only items that such a person would leave would be worthless? Wouldn’t they already take the valuable stuff? What the hell kind of subculture spends all their time betting on the contents of lockers? Is this even a thing? Why haven’t I seen these people? Can I go to one of these auctions? It appears basically to be the same 5-6 people at every auction, one of them who’s wife’s only role appears to be complaining about how much her husband put down on one of these lockers. Isn’t that why you’re on the show? The only good thing I saw was the auctioneer dude. Who ultimately buys the goods and pays these people? Having someone tell you the value is one thing but getting it in actual cash is another. Some items must be planted. Why wouldn’t the owner of the storage facility first comb through them and take all the expensive items? I guess in short, I can’t see how it isn’t faked.
The production company pays the facilities for undisturbed lockers.
It’s only partly faked. Some items are planted, some lockers are combined, but they don’t salt lockers with stuff from outside and the bidders don’t know what’s inside in any case. Nobody plants $300,000+ worth of art in a locker just for a TV show.
Sure they do. The buyers know in advance that they aren’t allowed to keep the salted items. They are merely on loan. (The owners of the items hope the publicity increases the value of them.) A few items actually come from the bidders themselves.
All these types of shows are notorious for staging fake sales. The pawn shop shows, Comic Book Men, etc.
The worst example of salting I saw on Storage Wars back when I still watched it was a tiny locker of absolute junk: old clothes and stuff. In a drawer was tucked away the Olive Oyl shoes from the Popeye movie, complete with a certificate of authenticity. Good grief.
The label “reality” show is highly misleading. It’s mostly all staged.
One of the consequences of Storage Wars is that a lot of people started showing up at storage auctions and bidding up the prices to absurd levels like on the show. The pros really hated that.
Unless you’re a full time 2nd hand goods dealer, forget going to these.
As to abandonment: It’s not whether you visit the locker, it’s whether you pay the rent. After a set period of time without paying, the storage owner gets to open it up and sell it at auction for back payment. The excess over the payment (which may often not happen) can be reclaimed by the contents owner depending on the state’s rules.
And people really do leave valuable-ish stuff in these. But not often enough you can make money bidding and hoping to find the odd valuable.
Sometimes peoples’ lives just go south and they can’t manage to do things others in better circumstances could do.
One of my nieces ended up with quite a lot of stuff that had belonged to my Grandmother, some of which was probably pretty valuable. There were items Grandma had in her house that had belonged to her Grandmother. My older sister had possession of this stuff, and when she passed away, my niece took it over. She kept it in a storage locker. As her drug problem escalated, her monetary priorities shifted away from extra, non-narcotic spending. The storage locker was probably one of the first things to go.
I read somewhere that the producer was going to include a bit in which they find out what happened to the people who put the stuff in the lockers, but found the stories too sad and depressing to include.
Don’t have a source handy, but I do remember reading somewhere that something like 90% of the stuff that goes into a locker is never reclaimed by the owners; they simply stop making payments and the locker owners do whatever their policy is on it. Some do auctions (I’ve seen ads in the paper for these) and one local storage locker company had an associated thrift store and the contract said that this was what was done with the locker’s contents if people defaulted.
I used a locker briefly when I moved to a smaller place some years back. When I came back to retrieve my belongings (and yes, I did pay my rent) a mouse had made a nest in a box spring I had stored there. :mad: I thought that locker was airtight! Guess I was wrong. Anyway, the company did give back an otherwise non-refundable deposit.
