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A&E Storage Wars - interesting show :)

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FelixDeKat said:
Sorry to burst your bubble and rain on your parade, but.....

Ive been watching this too on and off for a few months. Its about as rigged and fixed as that silly Mexican family car repo show was. Takes all the fun out of it knowing they seed the lockers they win with interesting items so you wont turn the channel. If its not that, then theres the psuedo-drama.

You know the lockers are seeded when 9 out of 10 times they make 11ty billion dollars on each score. Such bullcorn. If anything, stupid shows like this might encourage more locker theft when every two-bit criminal thinks they can also make "a big score...just like on TV maw! And I dont even have to bid!" 🙄
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you know this how?

they edit out most of the boring..obviously...but that is different from the charge of simply faking it out irhgt.
 
I know that the show only portrays the results of the most fruitful auctions, but they are pretty fun to attend, even if you dont intend on bidding. I have never completely lost my ass on a storage auction so far, but that's because I know what to look for. There is a free guide at <removed>that has the basics on what to look for in a bin type auction. Wishful thinking is great, and hopefully everyone will get a chance to find a goldmine, but knowing what to look for is key in a storage auction.

Happy Hunting!
 
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Doggiedog said:
Just wondering how you know it's rigged. I'm not doubting you. I'm just wondering.

I thought it was weird that no one else seems to bid. Just those 4 guys. Sometimes you see a swarm of people there but all they do is stand around and never bid.
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the others lets call them "fill-ins" do bid but they never win. there must be some understanding that only the four cast are the only ones who can win the lockers.
 
laughinglinux said:
I know that the show only portrays the results of the most fruitful auctions, but they are pretty fun to attend, even if you dont intend on bidding. I have never completely lost my ass on a storage auction so far, but that's because I know what to look for. There is a free guide at storageunitauctionlist.com that has the basics on what to look for in a bin type auction. Wishful thinking is great, and hopefully everyone will get a chance to find a goldmine, but knowing what to look for is key in a storage auction.

Happy Hunting!
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lol
 
looks like brandi finally made some money.. i still don't get how they can live on their thrift store income...
 
Bumping a old thread but there is also a similar show on a station called true TV and the shows name is Storage Hunters.

I only found this as I was searching for storage wars and and this came up with just storage in the search.

It's about the same thing, the true tv channel has a ton of rip off shows like this one, and this one has some annoying bidders but the guy running the auction is a bit cooler as he is younger then the storage wars guy and tends to give people a lot of nicknames.

Also they seem to show more of what the people win compared to storage wars and sometimes you get some odd storage bins such as the last one I watched it looked like a meth lab but since no drugs was visible they were able to sell it. 😛

And it goes into some of the risks they take, such as a bin had a desk with SSN and credit card numbers on a bunch of papers so they had to void the auction and reported it to the police and another had a few stuffed animals and they had the wildlife agency come in and they took one of them because it was of a extinct animal head, looked like some kind of elk or something, but they were able to keep those of some birds and what looked like a cheetah / leopard.
 
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I don't think they rig the units. They just don't show the situations where people other than the ones featured on the show win a unit. They show a balance of losing units and winning units, not every single unit won by one of the people they feature. There are probably a lot of blah units filmed that never get on the air.

So the choice of which units they put on the show is how they create the tension for the viewers, not by rigging what's in the units.

Doggiedog said:
Watching it now. That guy Dave is a douchebag.
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YEAAAAAAAAAP!
 
Fun show. The hard part is finding an honest storage site that doesn't sift through the contents and remove the good stuff beforehand. A buddy told me he knew an owner of a storage site and said they took anything really valuable out of the unit and replaced the lock (before the auction). Not worth the risk IMO.
 
SP33Demon said:
Fun show. The hard part is finding an honest storage site that doesn't sift through the contents and remove the good stuff beforehand. A buddy told me he knew an owner of a storage site and said they took anything really valuable out of the unit and replaced the lock (before the auction). Not worth the risk IMO.
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That makes sense, I know I sure as hell would if it was legal. It's not like you have much else to do if you own a storage place. There isnt any laws saying you can't do that is there?
 
On one of the Auction Hunter episodes, the guy said he makes 80% of his profits from 20% of the units. That leaves a lot of the units they win netting little to no money.
 
Brandy, she's a fine girl.

It's a fun show. Fun characters. I think all the shows are rigged to some degree. If they aren't super obvious about it, I'm willing to suspend disbelief and just enjoy the ride.
Auction Hunters is fun. I like Ton, but the other guy is beginning to get on my nerves.
Operation Repo is a mess. Just too obvious. And wow, the main woman makes Dog The Bounty Hunter's wife look like a Playmate!
 
I've been to quite a few storage auctions as well as a lot of other auctions. The show is correct in that there are people that frequent these auctions and you do get to know them and how they bid after you go to enough of them. Where it is wrong is in how much you can make. If you are doing this as your only source of income you will end up broke. The reason is you have to consider the source of the contents. A person that puts things in storage is not going to fill it with $10K in merchandise then leave it all there for less than a few hundred in storage fees. The only time you are going to get lucky is if that person died and nobody knew they had the stuff in storage. People don't just forget they have a $5k painting in storage and decide not to get it out because they owe a couple hundred.
 
0roo0roo said:
looks like brandi finally made some money.. i still don't get how they can live on their thrift store income...
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Thrift stores are entirely different than living off storage bins. My brother ran one for quite awhile and did an average of $2K profit each week. The thing is you have to have the right location as well as know how to make deals. It isn't for everyone but if you are the type of person that knows how to trade and sell , you can have a good life with it.
 
twinrider1 said:
I think all the shows are rigged to some degree. If they aren't super obvious about it, I'm willing to suspend disbelief and just enjoy the ride.
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It is sort of staged to some degree.

The network pre buys units all over CA and NV. Then uses those for the show. That is why there is always the same auctioneer. Now, wether they stock the units ahead of time? I'm not sure, I'd hate to think that was the case.

Auction Hunters is completely staged. They may do that for a living but if you watch at the beginning of the show, it says the show "is stories of their biggest finds".

I'm guessing they do buy units and then put in items they may have ran across in the past to reenact the story for TV. That's why they always finds guns, boats, motorcycles etc. No one is that lucky.

The other give away is that all the items that are worth something are usually wrapped in the same packing tape while everything else is covered in dust and wrapped different ways.



Operation repo is completely fake. There was a recent article where the show's creator was telling the reporter that they had all these crazy run ins and how it would make a great show. A light went off and he grabbed a camera and some friends from church and filmed the first season.
 
well mostly the estimate values are a bit optimistic, and labor is never taken into account, selling so many nick nacks has to take forever.
 
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