Maybe I should get into buying abandoned storage units?

[The Heretic]

Area shut down after military-grade ammo, equipment found in Rockwall storage unit

The new owner of a storage unit in Rockwall made a surprise discovery that prompted police to shut down a roadway near a shopping center Friday night.

www.fox4news.com

Read More

 

[cooper]

That box is labeled canning jars

 

[Nosferatu]

For every unit with ammo and grenades, you get 5000 units with rusted out, once used exercise equipment and moldy clothes not seen since the '80s.

 

[CamoDeafie]

Anyone in Salem area remember that storage unit place on Pine and Cherry Streets near the Deaf School? "Rambo-Friendly" was on its sign?

 

[titsonritz]

That box is labeled canning jars

You are wrong, most is hidden but it says, "Candy for Jarheads."

 

[FriendOfEvanWilliams]

I used to manage a ministorage and got a couple guns and a few other neat finds out of delinquent units. I will say, however, that 99% of what you find in a delinquent unit is soiled mattresses, dirty clothes, and for some reason there are always large broken appliances like stoves and refrigerators. We didn't do auctions, and every single unit was hundreds of dollars worth of dump fees so we usually just told people to get their stuff out and never come back.

 

[GWS]

Yep One guy finds Spiderman #1
the next get out of date school books and bulgy cans of food

 

[gmerkt]

Too bad those pictures don't show more. The grenades look like they might be dummy practice pieces. The practice "pineapple" grenades were unpainted with a blue spoon on them, blue for practice but we can't see enough to note color of such. Practice grenades usually have a hole in the bottom to allow spent gases from the flash cap to escape. It kinda looks like one of the grenades in the picture has a hole in the bottom.

I knew a guy in this area who was buying abandoned locker contents at auction. He only attended auctions where the doors were open and a minimal view of contents was permitted. If he could get some clue that there were things there of interest to him, he'd bid. He sometimes came up with reloading stuff in this manner which he sold to members of a range I belong to. Powder and bullets, mostly. Sometimes ammo, some of which was reloads.

I have no way to prove or even know the following. I suspect that there are times when abandoned locker contents up for auction are not virgin. Meaning, locker employees may highgrade them first. Let us say, it's probably a temptation for some.

Re. the quality in general of abandoned storage locker contents. It isn't like some of what you see on "Storage Locker Wars" or whatever. A rule of thumb, if someone didn't think any more of the stuff than to let it go, it probably wasn't worth much. The exception might be dead people whose relatives didn't know about the existence of the locker, or didn't bother to check into it.

What amazes me is the utter rubbish that some people pay good money to store for years.

Two things come to my mind. (1) If I have anything of much value, I'm not gonna keep it in a public storage locker due to security issues. (2) If it is such low importance to me to store it remotely, it very likely isn't worth keeping.

 

[The Heretic]

I used to manage a ministorage and got a couple guns and a few other neat finds out of delinquent units. I will say, however, that 99% of what you find in a delinquent unit is soiled mattresses, dirty clothes, and for some reason there are always large broken appliances like stoves and refrigerators. We didn't do auctions, and every single unit was hundreds of dollars worth of dump fees so we usually just told people to get their stuff out and never come back.

You just described some of what I found in my ex-wife's unit.

She had been living in the unit with her cats. She had a LOT of her stuff in garbage bags. We moved it into a smaller unit and I paid for a month's rent. I felt sorry for the poor cats.

I got the impression from the article that they were able to get photos of what is inside before they would bid on them. I assume the old guy who stopped paying the rent probably died. I would have the rent paid automatically? But maybe whomever inherited his estate just stopped paying?

Mostly, I hope to never have my stuff in a storage unit - too much chance of stuff getting stolen.

 

[Stomper]

You are wrong, most is hidden but it says, "Candy for Jarheads."

I hope all those crayons are the approved non-toxic variety!

 

[red442joe]

I went to one storage auction in Michigan.
They had a list of what was in them.
They lied about what was in them.
They made a big show about opening them.
Uhhhh, nobody asked about the fact they had the key to every lock on the door, and the cut locks laying on the ground.
Total scam.

Joe

 

[Bon Sauvage]

That box is labeled canning jars

Yeah. Canned pineapple.

 

[CamoDeafie]

My brother and I are currently renting a storage unit for our resale gig inventory and some of my stuff, but we are looking at getting LLC paperwork done, and then finding a retail shop space that we can move stuff into from the storage unit.. because we would like to be selling stuff on a more frequent basis, and having the ability to access and assess our inventory without needing to wait for the storage complex to open, and hoping the weather cooperates so that we can bring stuff out to check totes and the like. Also the space would be more useful for an industrial sewing machine setup for my gearmaking so that I can finally get ahead of all the various little gear projects that I have


On the other hand.. there is one thing I am cautious about.. a friend of my wife had tried to open a resale retail shop in a space in Corvallis, but the owner of the building raised rent and asked for much more money, and then took most of the inventory that she had in the space, put it all on an auction because she couldn't come up with something like 10k in time to pay off the City and the owner of the building a friend of hers was able to get some of the items that she had wanted to get out of the space after the auction had ended.

 

[oremike]

I have a storage unit for my business, all I keep in there are low value bulk items like bundles of cardboard boxes, packing peanuts and empty 5 gallon buckets.

 

[P7M13]

Dude in the article sounds like a ninny.....

 

[Mikej]

In the last 10 years, I'd say, the building of high rise storage units has increased exponentially in NE potland.

Here's a map of just my hood within a 10 or less, minute drive. About a C-note per month for a 10'X10' space.
https://www.google.com/search?rlz=1...,[45.559532892178844,-122.54829587130625],13]
I don't get it.

 

[Hueco]

You guys are freaking me out about the storage units.

Family will be moving to to rural somewheresville for a year by next summer for my wife's internship. The plan was to just store most of what we got - no sense in moving it only to then move it again for the next year (post-doc) only to then move it again where we decide to settle.

I'm liking the storage idea less and less the more I read about it.

 

[P7M13]

You guys are freaking me out about the storage units.

Family will be moving to to rural somewheresville for a year by next summer for my wife's internship. The plan was to just store most of what we got - no sense in moving it only to then move it again for the next year (post-doc) only to then move it again where we decide to settle.

I'm liking the storage idea less and less the more I read about it.

LOL. Stored stuff worth ~$100K for three years until I was able to offload it. Never had a problem. Insure it if you're worried -- it's just stuff.
Also know someone who rented and moved into their storage location and then looted all the other lockers. This was back when they prosecuted people and the person did a short amount of time in one of those work prisons.

The best solution - find someone you trust with land, buy a shipping container and store it on their land with all your stuff inside.

In the last 10 years, I'd say, the building of high rise storage units has increased exponentially in NE potland.

Here's a map of just my hood within a 10 or less, minute drive. About a C-note per month for a 10'X10' space.
https://www.google.com/search?rlz=1...,[45.559532892178844,-122.54829587130625],13]
I don't get it.

I don't get it either. I don't need to hold onto something that much.
If you think about it, it's just another form of hoarding. If it's mine and I cannot store it on my property, it's sold, goes to Salvation Army, given away, or the dump.
The stuff I stored was for someone else, and had a total cost of ~$6K in storage fees, which was less than two months rent that they had been paying for their business. Considering what was done with it at the end, it was worth every penny to store it. I'll add, because I was the one "maintaining" it, I found the storage of said to be a tedious PITA and several times per year wanted to say "F-You" and haul all the stuff to the dump.

Edit to add: a buddy lived in Boston - port-a-potty sized apartment for $$$$, and his racing motorcycles would have been stolen in a minute had he left them on the street. So he stored them in a gated storage facility. The setup worked for him, but my question was always, "why the heck do you live in Boston?"

 

[powermad]

I worked for a guy in the 90's that got the bright idea to buy storage units.
When it got slow in the shop he said I could sift through stuff to re-sell.
After a couple hours of digging through garbage I said screw it and went home instead.
In the end it wound up costing him money to get rid of it all.

The last time I had a storage unit was for all the car parts that I had accumulated.
I paid for a few months to store it then chucked most of it.

 

[revjen45]

"For every unit with ammo and grenades, you get 5000 units with rusted out, once used exercise equipment and moldy clothes not seen since the '80s."

That smell of rodent urine.