Storage Wars

Over the weekend, my husband and I had a Storage Wars marathon.  For those of you who have never heard of it, it is a newer (2010) show on A&E (We streamed it through Netflix since we don't have cable).  I was only planning on watching 1 episode to check it out and well, eight episodes later........let's just say that we really thought it was interesting.  Basically, they follow five different people around to storage auctions.  Most of the five people show up to the same auctions, so they really get to know each other.  Storage auctions are when people have stuff in a storage unit but fail to pay their monthly bill.  After three months of not paying, their unit get put on the auction list.  During the auction, they open up the unit and everyone has 5 minutes to see what's inside.  They can only look from the entrance of the unit and CAN NOT go inside.  The bidding then starts.  Sometimes they see good stuff from the entrance and other times they only see junk (or what they think is junk!) Some Most of the people don't like each other so they are always trying to bid each other up.  Because of this, some of the people end up paying more for a unit then they originally would.  Once they purchase the unit, they have 48 hours to get everything out.  Some of the units are full of surprises!  One unit that looked like all it had was furniture really had collectible action figures worth 10's of thousands!  Another unit held an entire coin collection.  Still other units had full piggy banks and safes with money.  I can't believe some of the stuff that people leave in storage units.  My husband and I came up with two conclusions about why the units with awesome stuff went unpaid  (1) the owner of the unit passed away and the heirs let it go, or didn't know about it.  (2) Or that the couple that was renting the unit was in the middle of a divorce and thought that the other person was paying the rent when really no one was. 
If you ever get the time or opportunity, check out the show.  It's pretty interesting!