I’m shocked, shocked that they’re not regularly finding treasures in those abandoned storage lockers.
Next you’ll tell me wrestling is scripted.
Anyway, here’s the story.
http://www.avclub.com/articles/storage-wars-is-totally-fake-alleges-new-lawsuit-t,89787/
no man, it’s reality.
Oh man… I feel so violated!
Well, I guess money does own this town.
Something tells me someone is a little pissed about being fired. Which really makes me question his claims.
I never assumed Storage Wars was “real” (I always figured the producers bought up all the units beforehand and then knew which ones to focus on because they knew all about the treasures inside), but the “th eproducers load these lockers up with unique-looking and valuable junk” theory always seemed much more far-fetched.
Loading up the lockers with interesting items seems to me to be the easiest way to try and create an interesting show.
Leaving everything to chance seems more difficult and time consuming.
My bet is that the lockers are almost always planted with interesting and unusual items.
I don’t want to jump the gun one way or the other, but it seems like the show has been on long enough that if they were planting items, the real owners of the lockers would have come forward to say something. I don’t know how many lockers they’ve opened, but I’d guess that by now they’ve opened enough that someone’s original owner would have a blog or a connection to a newspaper/media outlet or enough people would write something on their facebook page along the lines of “OMG Storage Wars went into my old storage locker today, I totally didn’t leave some of that stuff in there. That wasn’t even my lock on it. The junk was mine, but I’m pretty sure if there was a old civil war gun and bunch of antique jewelery I would have gone back for it before I stopped paying them. I’ve never seen that stuff before in my life” A few of those types of posts showing up and eventually going viral and the show would have been over.
I wonder if they contact the original owner of the lockers and have them sign an NDA and give them some hush money first. Maybe in exchange for that, they pay off the owners debt to the storage company so the collectors stop harassing them.
It’ll be interesting to see if there’s any anonymous fallout now that this lawsuit’s been filed.
Of course it is fake… the only question is defining your definition of “fake”. To my way of thinking there is ZERO chance that this show was 100% organic and that the producers did not - at some level - plant people, items, information, et al to make the show more interesting.
I only watched the show 4 or 5 times but found Dave to be the most irritating person on the show. That said, I would place money on the fact his claims are at least mostly true.
I enjoy the show because of the items and the personalities, so I don’t really care if they seed or not. That portion of the show is the glue that holds the good stuff together, and I don’t worry about what the glue is made of.
I only caught snippets of the show and various commercials, but seriously how often would you actually find highly valuable or very interesting stuff in the random storage unit? Much less the ones that are abandoned. My guess would be either they don’t show all the crappy units that don’t have show appeal and focus on the tiny fraction that do or they are cheating in some manner.
I had suspected the producers might be slipping cash to the Usual Protagonists to make sure they were successful bidding for units (odd how the general public never is seen outbidding our heroes), but I question if and just how frequently units were “seeded” with good stuff (given that a fair percentage eventually prove to be mostly or all crap).
There is however the possibility that I want to believe this because, as noted, Hester is the biggest jackhole on the show (and he has plenty of competition).
Gee, I wonder which female cast member supposedly had the plastic surgery? 
I think it’s pretty obvious elements have been faked. I noticed in particular that all the bids in this last season have been much higher than they ever used to be in a way that just makes no sense. They used to get lockers all the time for $200-$400 and all of a sudden they are all going for $1000 plus and this is on lockers that show virtually no potential at all from what is visible. I am sure the producers must have decided to amp up the bidding prices as I cannot see any other reason for the big change.
The fact lockers have been salted also seems obvious as often what they find makes no sense in the context they find it. Lockers full of junk with isolated random high price items just don’t make much sense.
It’s still a reasonably entertaining show though.
That one seems odd to me. They wouldn’t need to spend money on this, just not air the auctions where the general public won.
Not that I think the show is strictly reality but there are subtler ways of slanting the truth that are probably cheaper than what Hester is complaining.
Lets not forget he was not renewed so a shot of take that motherfuckers is to be assumed in his statements.
The first time I was genuinely disappointed to realise that a reality show was being “rigged” was with Junkyard Wars (a.k.a. Scrapheap Challenge). Since then, I’ve been a bit more jaded.
Exactly. Seeding lockers with high-priced stuff requires buying the stuff at a high price first from a dealer or collector. The show may be “fake” in some ways, but Hester is trying to paint the producers as stupid too.
I always assumed that the show only showed lockers that someone on the show wins. If someone not on the show won a locker that they wanted, then it simply isn’t part of the show. They did show once some guy who out bid Jarrod, and he swings by to help him look through it. I think they will only show a bidding for a locker that they can show the insides of.
I was under the impression that the success of the show has brought in new bidders (therefore more cash) to the locker auctions throughout the country. Higher prices is the logical result. I think they have even shown them complaining about it. My understanding is those in the business, but not on the show don’t like the show since it is basically killing their livelihood.
I suppose the show could be faked; it wouldn’t be hard. They don’t even need to seed a real locker. The entire locker could be fake.
But I also think that the hit rate of great finds is overblown. Many times they find things that are interesting but not particularly valuable. People not on the show, but in the business would be better to corroborate the ‘realness’ of the show. If the finds are particularly frequent or unbelievable, I would guess that someone in the know (but not associated with the show or with an axe to grind) would say something to that effect.
Also, there are numerous times where they sort a locker and the entire sort is about shitty items and slowly seeing if they make back their money. Dave Hester is particularly notable on this matter since he clearly overvalues shit to make himself look smarter.
I dislike Dave Hester. My favorite episodes are the ones where he is not there. My second favorites are the ones where he buys nothing. Talking trash is pretty much his MO. I look forward to seeing more storage wars without him.
Are any of those shows not fake? I saw an episode of that pawn shop thing, and some other show where restaurant employees were “busted” by hidden cameras, and both of them seemed phony as hell.
I’ve been in enough storage bins to know that they normally contain non-working big-screen TVs, boxes of random kitchen utensils, trash bags of random kids’ clothes, chipped-up skis or bent tennis rackets, sofas that haven’t seen the light of day since 1992, and at least one car part - usually one snow tire that doesn’t match any of the owner’s cars.
The first episode I saw of this show, I knew it had to be cooked up.
I always assume, if its on TV, at least part of it is fake.
So? They could just sell it back at the end of the show. Or the stuff could be borrowed or rented. All of that is assuming the stuff is as valuable as they say it is in the first place. Once we accept the that the show is fake, a whole world of possibilities opens up and it isn’t hard to imagine them getting fake experts to vastly overstate the value of items or declare cheap replicas to be the real thing.