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U-Haul storage facility auctions locker contents
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Dan Wolcott, owner of Dan's Odds & Ends in Tallmadge, surveys a storage locker that was up for auction at the U-haul storage facility on Mahoning Avenue in Youngstown. About 100 people turned out to bid on nearly 30 lockers whose renters were delinquent on their payments.
By Elise Franco
Youngstown
No one wasted any time shelling out cash during a public sale Tuesday at the U-Haul storage facility on Mahoning Avenue, but some bidding veterans said it’s hard to snag a truly valuable locker.
About 100 people gathered to bid on the contents of about 30 storage lockers. The first two lockers quickly sold for $325 and $410, respectively.
Jim Vinion, facility manager, said the lockers being auctioned had been in arrears for many months. He said the people who rent the units are delinquent in paying their rent.
“We always contact the customer until right before the auction starts to try and get some type of settlement from them,” he said.
Vinion said bidders are given the opportunity to peek inside each locker before they bid, but they can’t go through any of the contents. Most of the bidding is done blind because so much of the lockers’ contents is boxed up.
Dan Wolcott, owner of Dan’s Odds & Ends in Tallmadge, said it’s unusual for lockers to contain items worth a lot of money.
“People think they’re getting a treasure, like what’s on TV,” he said. “People spend $300 or $400 on a unit filled with $100 worth of stuff.”
Wolcott said he came close to winning a few lockers Tuesday but was outbid. He said several units topped out at about $500.
“There was nothing that was really worth the money,” he said.
Nick Harvey, who owns South Side Thrift Store in Youngstown, said he’s been coming to the public sales for about six years looking for additions to his store.
“You’re basically buying it blind,” he said. “But maybe 70 percent of the contents will be useful items. The other 30 percent is just trash.”
Harvey said the most common items found inside the lockers are household items — furniture, electronics and clothes.
Some of the items found inside the units on Tuesday included televisions, bed frames, children’s toys and mannequins, along with boxes of miscellaneous items.
“You really just never know what’s going to be inside,” he said. “There’s no guarantee I’ll get something every time.”
Harvey said in his six years bidding at the public sales, he’s never seen a group so large.
“It’s usually a handful of people bidding on four or five lockers,” he said.
Wolcott said he thinks the auctions are becoming more popular because of television shows such as A&E’s “Storage Wars.”
He said he’s been bidding on lockers for about three years and only once has he hit the jackpot on a locker filled with valuables — something the stars of Storage Wars seem to do on a regular basis.
“Three years ago I bid $850 on a locker at an auction in Cleveland that was filled with brand-new electronics,” he said. “I made a $20,000 profit on that stuff. But that really never happens.”