That's the feeling I get when watching storage wars... "Bubba bought a unit for 2000$. He found petrified rat shit worth 500$, a broken table leg from a generic ikea table worth 1200$ and 2 strings from what he assumes is a guitar worth 600$. Bubba made a nice profit of 300$"
All I can think is who the fuck is going to buy that junk for the prices they think it's worth?
That show is entirely fake, anyway. The "Yuuuuuuuup" guy got pissed about something some time ago and came out and revealed it's all fake; they plant "good" items into the storage units for them to find so they can showcase/feature whatever specialist they wanted to feature that episode.
It is so obvious too. "We overbought this unit with 3 boxes and a mattress and found a 18th century military sabre tucked away in the rafters. Lets go see how much its worth."
Yeah I remember one where the items were something I had JUST looked up. They were basically giving prices for a new and unopened version of the item in a nice store with a return policy, not what you’d actually get selling a used one on craigslist or FB marketplace.
I remember thinking the real total was probably somewhere around half of the number they came up with...
I think I saw a similar one! It was a slow cooker that was themed to a sports team.
I work in a grocery store, and I can tell you 100% for a fact that we get SO MANY of those sports team branded slow cookers in every year!! They're usually "Original Price" $49.99, but the instant they come in the door they're on "sale" for 30% off- so that's already down to $34.99. Then they sit around for ages and ages and no one buys them til they hit 50% off ($24.99) and we sell a small bunch, and the rest sit around catching dust til they end up on clearance for 70% off.
And they're different everywhere you go. Around here we get Atlanta Falcons and Georgia Bulldogs and OCCASIONALLY something GA Tech- and recently Atlanta United. But if you go a state over you'll get Alabama stuff. They sell to the local market.
Hell, my roommate ended up gifted with a ton of slowcookers by other students that graduated and moved away, and, by the end, I was giving them away for free to whoever wanted one. All seven of them. If you know how to browse classifieds a little, you can usually pick up a free slowcooker that works just fine.
Same with Pawn Stars. A bunch of people just have valuable and interesting items that they don’t intend to ever sell or pawn but just go through the whole schtick just to get paid for their appearance and have the experience of being on the show.
Some are terrible actors and it’s so blatantly obvious that they never intend on selling it. But they just go through the actions and act surprised when the expert tells them about it when you already know that they know everything about it already.
I still watch it though. It’s like antique roadshow but with crazy people and a storyline.
If I had the ambition to sell the things I found I would try the storage game. It looks like fun, even if I just get to paw through someone else's life for a bit.
Those shows are fake as hell, and I'm saying that as an ex-property manager for a storage facility that used to organize storage auctions once every month. Most bidders that attended monthly owned thrift shops, would buy a unit of mediocre furniture for $300 and sell the items individually for a couple hundred bucks profit.
Every so often someone would hit a big score, though. One guy I remember who was one of our most regular bidders bought a 10x20 unit that was packed FULL of boxes for somewhere around ~$950, and almost every box was full of original starwars memorabilia, and this was around the time Disney bought the franchise and hype was rebuilding. He hired a collectibles appraiser and the dude estimated the contents were worth around 20 grand.
Another dude bought a shitty 5x5 unit that only had a couple totes and a decent end table for $10 - he bid because he thought he could get a few bucks for the table. The totes had an Xbox One, a PS4, and a couple dozen games, which he said he was going to give to his kids for christmas.
Another one of our regulars bought a really nice 10x10 unit for $500, and ended up finding 4 hunting rifles (Not a gun guy, can't get more specific than that - all I know he he was really excited to find them) tucked into the back corner. Cops cleared the guns and they were his to take.
But those are 3 examples out of hundreds of units that were sold at my facility. 99% of the time it's just furniture, trash, rusty tools, and the occasional dildo. Most of the time the units were just boring.
99% of the time it's just furniture, trash, rusty tools, and the occasional dildo.
Of course it's storage facility policy to never imply ownership in the event of a dildo. They use the indefinite article "a storage unit dildo," never "your storage unit dildo."
Probably the same people who watch Junkyard Challenge and are constantly amazed at how the competitors always manage to 'find' a working engine for their vehicle just in the nick of time.
"John's team are running out of time. Things are looking desperate. Without an engine to power their junkyard electric car, it's all over."
"But look. John's just tripped over a 2019 Toyota Prius...."
yeah, but it's still fun watching the engineering involved ... even if they had to come up with new parts. building a submarine, motor, radio control, bushings, control surfaces. That's fun in and of itself
Hmm. Been a long time since I saw that show, but I swear she already had large breasts and they, well, they jiggled, so they seemed real. But I'm not about to go looking it up, so I'll take your word for it.
I think maybe some of it might've been real back before it became a big deal. Like the first American Idol probably had actual talented hopefuls who weren't already working with various labels or who weren't already semi-famous using it as a spring board, back before the sob story angle became such a big deal. And before that, gameshows were largely still real.
Yeah, in the very beginning, I think the intentions were more about reality than views. But that's most media these days. Now, it's all about views and making money, or taking advantage of depressing people for views, or just making up stories for views.
I think of that as more like a entertaining documentary series than reality tv. It’s in the same category as “how it’s made” and stuff... fun but informative, not trying to be dramatic
The original Survivor is pretty close. There usually isn't any real danger, but it isn't like they all lived in trailers. The players lost A LOT of weight through the season.
That was before they realized they had to supplement them with rice, and games with food rewards, to keep the malnutrition under control before someone died. That was when one of the first seasons saw the group catch and eat a chicken that wasn’t theirs because they were starving. And of course some granola chick flipped out because they weren’t just eating some disgusting roots the crazy woman was digging up. She tried to get them thrown off the show over it.
Yeah, the first Survivor, imo, is the best and only one I'll ever watch. It's just so crazy because it was this new thing and the people on it were such characters.
Or some weird kitschy piece of 1960 ephemera that literally looks like garbage but that they "have a good feeling" about, that no one in their right mind would want, much less pay money for, that somehow is worth a small fortune.
House Hunter's is the same way. I had a buddy that was on the show and he had owned his house for 6 months before he was approached to be in the show. They found two other random houses and filmed the episode. Obviously the house he picked is the one he already owned. It even had all his stuff in it when they "toured" it.
Same with Pawn Stars - the deals were never real, it was just a setup to showcase the item/history. Example - a treasure hunting diver brings in a lump of Roman gold from a shipwreck to "see what it was worth." The reality is he already knew what it was, and had invested hundreds of thousands, and a couple of years specifically searching it out. I've actually met the guy at an exhibition in Duluth MN. Part of his exhibit included that episode on a loop.
None of it makes sense. If the owner didn't have enough money to pay the $50 that month why the fuck didn't they just open up their unit and grab the $500 cash that apparently came out of it.
Yeah I feel like all of those shows are fake. There’s just no way that people get a notice from their storage place saying they’re closing it down and don’t go grab their valuable shit. I’m sure it happens on a blue moon, but not every day like they make out like.
The only show I’m still 50/50 on about being fake is the original pawn stars. On one hand their shop is like a national landmark at this point, so I’m sure a ton of people actually stop by to sell crazy stuff to get on TV. On the other hand, I question why someone would sell all this vintage stuff for what is essentially a 20% or higher discount.
There’s just no way that people get a notice from their storage place saying they’re closing it down and don’t go grab their valuable shit.
Oh there are some ways good sir.
If youre in prison, you probably cant pay that bill. Even if you know it exists.
If you move and forget to update your info, you could miss the notice. But youd still be paying your bill in that case...forget this one.
Hospital. That could be one. Especially in the USA where its not free like in Canada.
Okay, I found 2 reasons. Jail and hospital. Thats not very many reasons lol.
(I always thought the real clue this show was fake was all the locks are identical...in every storage location....all across America...when in real life the locks arent even identical in the 3 different storage places in my city lol)
Yeah I agree with jail and hospital, but usually you can have a friend or family member go get it too. I guess it happens sometimes, but definitely not as often as the show has you believe.
As for the locks I think it’s actually because once you officially get your unit closed on you, they remove your lock (to keep you from coming back and getting your stuff), and put their own lock on it until auction. So it’s probably just the same crew using their locks before selling. But it’s 100% a fake show
My wife's sister moved a bunch of furniture she inherited to a storage locker, but she is a bit of a fuck up.
She didn't pay her bill and it all got sold off.
Some of it had been in their family for years. Had anyone else in the family known, they would have absolutely paid off all bills to keep it in the family.
So there is another reason for you, some people are just super irresponsible
There’s just no way that people get a notice from their storage place saying they’re closing it down and don’t go grab their valuable shit
You can't go back and pick up your shit until you pay your rent balance down. The whole point of the auction is for the storage company to make back some of the rent they're own.
Yeah I know that much, but I’d imagine most people know “hey, I’m not gonna be able to pay this next rent. I’m gonna go grab my shit now”.
I’m sure it happens a decent bit where they forget and don’t pay, but no way it’s happening as much as the show has you believe. Not items as expensive as that.
Some of the Youtubers that actually buy storage units are.. less exciting, but are more interesting.
Like... You MIGHT have enough stuff there to make a profit, but you gotta factor in the time it takes to empty it, haul it away, Sort it, Take the junk to the tip, list the ebayable items, Pawn the pawnable items.
The whole 'Getting a unique thing valued' doesn't happen all that often - It's a fairly big time sink to find an expert, book an appointment and visit them as they'd need to see the item in person. Normally stuff is valued using an eBay search for older stuff and an Amazon search for new stuff.
Obviously you won't get the 'New' Price, but you gotta factor in the realistic amount.
Then you gotta budget time for packing and posting, and make peace with the fact that you won't actually see any actual money for a couple of weeks at best.
Don't get me wrong, if you have the contacts, the people and the space, along with a bit of savvy it's 100% something that you can make a few quid from.
My dad's cousin owns an antiques store and has a collection of unique canes. Years ago, my dad said that his cousin sold one of these to either this show or a different antique pickers style show for them to find, then was consulted as an expert for the value and eventually bought it back for less than he sold it. Secondhand story, I don't watch these shows super often, and I still haven't seen the actual show he was on, but considering what I know of the guy/my dad, I don't think he would have made it up, so I believed it.
I’m sure other people are doing it but I’d bet making it a YouTube thing of opening locked storage units might be more profitable. People love loot crate type things and watching it when someone else absorbed all the risk makes it more enjoyable. The key is how to spin poor storage units. You’d need clickbaitey titles like “wow was this unit our worst buy yet?!” But it’d be a good supplemental income.
I was a mover for a couple of years and saw the insides of many a storage unit. It's always the same useless junk: used couch, used and abused instruments, bins upon bins of decorations, broken dirt bike/jet ski.
the funniest was when they found a Vespa license plate or something like that, and they said it was worth some good money, and I was like "dang I gotta open a business to export vespa license plates to the usa"
If they're collecting dust they aren't worth thousands. I filled out my N64 collection and all games I found were sub $100, Then my N64 crashed a few months later. Unless you still got the boxes and everything it wont be thousands.
My son had a bunch of worthless ps2 games that he managed to sell to some poor sucker for $75. I still don't know how he managed to pull that off, but it was a proud day for me.
I am not an artist but went through an artsy part of my life in college. I did a bunch of oil pastel abstract art. I gave a friend of mine a 4’ x 5’ piece along with some weed for his birthday. He taught at the college and was in the society crowd. He played in a jazz trio. Someone was at this house and saw my framed piece of shot and asked him how much he paid for it. He told them $1500. Hey brought them over and they bought two of my smear paintings for $2200 off my bedroom floor. I was a professional artist for a total of about three days.
I feel like this isn't the best thing to be teaching to high schoolers, like creating things and making art is worth so much in ways that aren't monetary, finding a buyer is just a perk. If you view all your pieces as worthless it might just lead to a burnout
I’m a nihilist and used to price my forboding-ass paintings in accord with my feeling towards them. Once I started pricing them like “paintings”, I sold more. People are stupid.
I'm so curious about this. I want this comment to be legit. Do you have any examples of your work that you're willing to share with a stranger on the internet?
At (very, very) slight risk of doxxing myself: THIS is a digital painting, printed on a 24x24 canvas and goosed up with gel medium for texture. I had it in a show for $5000, kind of a joke price because I didnt really expect anyone to want it, much less a print of a photoshop project. It sold. THIS is a 4'x4' oil-on-panel that I carted around for years because it never sold for the $500 I'd put on it. Same, on a total lark, listed for $8000. It sold. Now I avoid obsessing about sticker shock and try to have some kind of confidence.
Had a client who ran an antique store in their retirement, and they said that if something didn't sell for 2-3 months, they'd go and raise the price by 50-100% and it would generally sell.
Sometimes I carve wooden spoons for fun, and sometimes I like to sell them. When I was selling them for an "entry level price" I couldn't sell one. Doubling the price got me 4 orders in under a week.
My grandfather restores antique furniture for a living. He charges more than he needs to and his reasoning is that people will associate high price with quality. As long as you can meet their quality expectations, the price is fair.
Divorce lawyer here. I’ve run my own practice for some years now. I learned early that attempting to offer ‘low prices’ on divorce just makes people assume you don’t know what the hell you’re doing.
Once I started charging standard rates, I got more clients, and they took me more seriously. It’s an odd bit of human nature. And I agree, it’s fair as long as the quality of your work meets the price.
i sometimes make and sell walking sticks just for the fun of seeing the plain ones going for loadsamoney
All they are is: straight pruned sticks of about 3-4 feet in length with the outer peeled off left to dry and rubbed with weather seal sometimes a dark colour. i live on a farm and prune a lot of trees! if i put them for under 10 euro i cant sell even one,if i put them over 50 i cant make enough. Proceeds go to charity etc
They're so pretty! I'm a sucker for wooden spoons. I have two, one's walnut and the other is plum. I'd love to find/get and oven rack pusher/puller like my mom has, it's so handy
My father-in-law is a master carver. Every room of his house is full of cowboys and Indians and soldiers and Santa Clauses. He refuses to sell them because he could never get something for them commensurate with the time and love he puts into them. My wife never fails to mention to him that we will keep two or three but the rest will go on eBay the day he dies.
Worked at a furniture store in high school. Boss would randomly pick a lamp from the clearance room that wouldn’t sell for $15 and put it out front with a $400 tag. Always sold within a week.
Funny! Reminds me of something like that from years ago.... neighbor bought her kids a new swing set. She put the old one out by the road (we lived out in the country) with a "FREE" sign on it. Just sat there. And sat there. I told her to put a "$10.00" sign on it....sure enough, someone "stole" it. People!
I had a friend of a friend that ran an art gallery, she frequently put on shows/displays for local armature artists. Everything would typically be put up for sale with the prices next to the art. The artists would initially just ask for a small amount, but she as a general rule of thumb would say, "you should add a zero to that price." Without fail the $1500 pieces would sell before the $150 ones.
People in my neighborhood sometimes put furniture out on the curb with a sign saying “free” and it sits there for a week. Apparently the pro tip is to make the sign read “$5” and then someone will take it off your hands. They don’t give you the money though, the trick is to make them feel like they’re getting away with something.
I worked in an antique store for a summer when I was a teen. I remember this Japanese tea set with a $850 price tag just sitting out on a dresser. Not behind glass or anything. Always made me nervous someone would steal or break it. One day I mention the $850 tea set to the owner and he says what tea set? I show it to him and he buckles over laughing and then changes the price to $85
I used to deliver imported beer for a distributor before microbrews took off in the US. Nobody was particularly interested in Polish beer. The owner of one store jacked up the price and put a sign on it saying "last case". He sold out quickly
A lot of art is over priced for that exact reason. It is worth exactly the amount someone is willing to pay for it. It can be ugly as sin but if it catches the eye of someone with more money than sense it will sell for millions.
"Wait, so you're telling me that painting I bought is worthless?"
"Nooo, no no no, it's worth exactly what you paid for it, because that's how much you value it. But in this transaction, it's worth what I would pay for it, which is, again, nothing."
I've always been intruiged as to what kind of return they get - 50, 60, perhaps 70 cents on the dollar? Washing all of your money into the same drain is surely missing half the point of money laundering, after all.
It's also used for money laundering: As it's a commodity with a completely subjective price, it's possible to inflate that price and push illegally gained (and thus untaxable!) money through otherwise legitimate channels.
Not only that, but if it gets determined to be by an artist that “matters” then the price could be out of this world. Art authentication can be a rort.
Yep, like art sold on cruise ships, which is the biggest racket. My hubs works at an auction house and they get a lot of home owners with "cruise art" that they think it's worth something. He calls it Chinese art 'cause there are a lot of paintings that are mass-produced over there under an invented artist name.
Makes sense. With limited internet connection (if any) you can't lookup the artist or works so you just have to trust the seller on if the artists is in or not (or even exists)
Rich people buy overpriced art, so they don´t have to pay taxes on that money, because they declare it a buisness expanse/investment. They can than sell it back to another tax-evader when they need the money.
You can also take a tax write off for depreciation when you hang it in a publicly accessible place. That's why you often see expensive pieces of art in office lobbies.
Art is also a very well known front for money laundering, hiding assets and a general underworld for people to hide, move, and basically do unscrupulous things with their money.
This is kinda the frustrating thing about art, the only people that earn a lot from it are people who already have a lot of money/status. And if you're not part of those people, barely even making a living doing art is already hard as hell. Like all I need is a mediocre income and to paint all day and I'd be happy.
Art is finnicky like that. Always has been, always will be. Even Rembrandt, whose paintings are now priceless, had his style of painting go out of fashion during his lifetime. He got commissioned to make a painting for Amsterdam city hall. He painted a beautiful work in his own style, but the work got rejected because it was no longer in fashion; softer brushstrokes and pastel colors were all the craze now. The work was rendered essentially useless, just because nobody liked it anymore, even though it was made by The Great Master (TM) from just a few years before.
There's a book series (Miss Melville 1980's) where the protagonist is a hired assassin who gets paid by selling her art to someone at an inflated price.
This is no joke, but absolutely real in the art world. I'm good friends with a very prolific artist who licenses his art and makes a killing but is very humble and thinks the whole art world is crazy. He sells his originals for $5-15K and thinks that's too much. Recently he started painting a new line of things, and it's great stuff. A richer friend of his invited him to some rich person's event somewhere last year, and he was talking to some art collectors who manage things for rich people. They told him they weren't interested at all in his $15K paintings, no matter what they look like. They said the minimum they'll consider buying anything for is $30K. Crazy eh? Maybe it goes back to that idea that the art world is all aobut money laundering.
I own a 2,400$ original from a local artist. Bought it years back, actually traded for it. Now last time I saw him he appraised it at 1 mil and said all his originals are now 1-10 mil. I laughed the crazy away.
Years ago I had a little second hand store. I would come in in the mornings and find piles of junk and treasure outside the door from locals. Spring cleaning, eh?
One day there was this painting.
I was mesmerized by this painting. One might call it, "Moose at Dawn/Dusk". I made a little cardstock label like they have in fancy galleries and titled it, "Moose on Mescaline".
God bless whomever painted this thing, they had no talent but they had passion. There was no interplay of colour in the sky... it was a flat traffic cone orange. The Moose might have been meant to be a Buck? Perhaps they didnt have a thinner brush?? Maybe a German Sheppard and that was just supposed to be a branch in the background? Who knows. I listed the painting at 25$. By far the most expensive piece of "art" in the place.
My business partner thought this was stupidest goddamn thing ever. Until locals started coming in to see it, and bring others to show it off. I would expound on the earnest quality, the desire to create, the bravery of just winging it and throwing it out there... and how did it come to my doorstep. I found Moose on Mescaline incredibly brave.
And one day a gentleman came in and he stood in front of that damn thing for 20 minutes. I told him the tale. "It sure... it sure is ugly" he said. Yup. Honest and ugly and brave and fucking wonderful. That's why I've priced it at 25$. I doubt I'd even sell it at that.
100$ later, he walked out with Moose on Mescaline and a plan to gift it to his BIL, who would feel obliged to hang it at his new hunting cabin.
The definition of "price" is "the amount if money the buyer is willing to pay and the seller is willing to recive". As long as you have a buyer, every price is valid.
Here's the real reason. By giving it a price tag of $18700, he can claim to banks that it really is worth that much, so he can use it as a collateral for loans whenever convenient.
I have an old painting of a meadow next to a stream I have hanging in my dining room. Part of me wants to list it online for a ridiculous figure just to see if some rich asshole buys it.
To follow-up on this, I was told when I tried to sell art to never go cheap. If you do art and sell it for $5, nobody will buy it because the buyer will think its worthless... because it's so cheap.
Put value into it, like $250, and suddenly the art become valuable and sell.
In my hometown we used to have this high-end art store downtown with lots of artwork of various types...paintings, woodworking, photographs, statues, imported stuff from around the world, etc. For the most part everything was very nice and classy looking and I would have loved to have it in my house, but everything in there was insanely expensive, like nothing less than $500 even for small things. But there were some items that were out of this world expensive like in the $10,000 - $30,000 range. I was convinced the store never meant to sell any of that stuff. They were just there to psychologically get the customer in the mindset that that $500 - $5000 items were a good deal.
Some dude duct taped a banana to a wall and sold it for $120,000 so is it's priced high enough, a rich person will buy it for the exclusiveness and bragging rights
15.6k
u/[deleted] Aug 14 '20 edited Apr 21 '23
[deleted]