What kinds of interesting things have you found when you've opened up units to inventory them for auctions?

We once opened a big unit and right in the front, there was a huge box labeled "PORN" in great big black letters. (The guy paid it off before auction or that could have been an interesting sale. LOL!)

We sold another unit for $35. The buyer got a nice computer system, a new electric guitar in a case, and 3 sealed boxes filled with signed baseball cards in plastic cases and autographed baseballs. Pretty good deal, I'd say.

What kinds of interesting things have you found?

I used to be SHOCKED at how many people store their pornography. Unfortunately I am no longer surprised. I won't allow my children to be with me when I either inventory a unit or dispose of a unit. Too many times I find crap I don't want them exposed to.

I held an auction on a unit and had no takers. I tried to contact the tenant repeatedly prior to hauling it all to the dump, and only got her recorder. I spent a Saturday loading all of her crap into my pickup truck, it was pretty much just trash. As I left the facility, I stopped the office to grab some dump fee cash, and a briefcase fell off the truck and busted open in the street. I was now looking at a few dozen pictures of my lovely tenant in some pretty incredibly compromising "positions" starting to blow around our court.

Hmm.....I decided to make just ONE more call to the lovely lady and explain to her that I had found some pictures that she just might not want floating around the dump. Within minutes she called back, within the hour I had all of my back rent and dump fees covered all in trade for one sort of beat up briefcase.

Wow. That was a lucky find! I'm glad you got your money out of her.

I know what you mean about not wanting your kids exposed to some of the stuff you could find. I've found boxes with open bottles of booze and actually had people who wanted to bid on it. I don't know about you, but I can't imagine drinking out of a bottle that someone else might have been swigging from! (We can't legally sell it anyway because you need a license to sell liquor.)

We were doing a walk through one morning and heard a dog barking inside a unit. Some nut job had locked her dog in there because she had just moved to an apartment that wouldn't take pets and she hadn't found a home for him yet. She said she'd move him when she found a home. We told her to get over there immediately and let the dog out or we were cutting her lock. What kind of fool leaves an animal locked in a storage unit?

This was not one of our auction but...
We heard a guy had purchased a 10x30 full of books (previous owner had a bookstore) Will he was tossing the books that was damaged one hit the dumpter and out flew a paper. He pick up the paper to find it to be a very old bond. It wasn't any normal bond it was a barrier bond or something like that i forget the name of it. Anyways it was really old. The manager of the unit had given out the bidders info(a big no no!) and they contacted him to try to buy the books back. Well he said no and they got an attorney and suid him. Well in court the judge told them that he was the legal owner. He paid his attorney and went straight to the bank to cash it in. He then went to the storage facility and explained to the manager he should have suide them, but he wasn't going to as he had enough money now. The bond was worth 1 million dollars, he paid $20 for the unit because no one wanted to clean it out.
Boy i wish i was this lucky!!!

We had a unit that went for Auction and sold for around $400. Nothing really spectacular stood out and I was surprised it went for that much. When the Buyer got to the very back of unit he noticed 2 guitar cases. Upon opening the cases he realized he had hit the mother-lode, there in perfect condition was a Fender and I think he said a Gibson (old ones). Way to go man!

Well, I had a unit that didn't sell, so I proceded to clean it out. In doing so I found some departed soul's ashes, or so that is what is stated on the container. He is still our only guest here, on a shelf in the company space.
I found the company listed on the container, and they acknowledged that the person on the box was one of their "clients," if you will, but they do not have any listing of relatives.

I had forgot about that one, I also have a box of someone's departed ashes sitting on my shelf in our Company Unit that we found in and Auction Unit. I haven't been able to locate who they belong to and can't seem to bring myself to throw them away..... so they sit on our shelf.

Well, when we worked for our previous storage company, we had a tenant with a 10 x 10drive up unit that passed away. For over a year we held on to the room trying to find family members who would come claim the property. Unfortunately, none were to be found so we finally auctioned it off.

The room was packed floor to ceiling with boxes. We had a new buyer at the auctions who was determined to get this unit and it bid up to about $300. I guess the thought of all those boxes made her sure that she was getting a deal.

Unfortunately, after the auction was over, she found out that the contents of each and every box were cans of vienna sausages. And since they had been sitting for several years in the non-climate controlled heat and humidity of Mobile, AL...most of the can were warped and bulging.

I never could figure out why the tenant had rented a 10 x 10 drive up unit to store so many cases of vienna sausages for...he must have really loved 'em.

Lisa, that's a funny story. I wonder how much it cost her to dispose of all those cans.

I wonder if this was found after an auction....

FRESNO, California (AP) -- A central California biochemist convicted of killing her estranged husband by knocking him out and stuffing him into a vat of acid has been sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Larissa Schuster of Clovis was convicted in December of murdering Timothy Schuster with the special circumstance that the murder was committed for financial gain.

His half-dissolved body was found a few days after his 2003 death in a barrel that was inside a storage unit his wife had rented.

At the 47-year-old woman's sentencing hearing Friday, a Fresno County Superior Court judge also rejected her attorney's motion for a new trial.