Self-storage units take up a staggering 1.9 billion square feet (176.5m square metres) throughout the US. That's 5.9 square feet per person – but people sometimes forget or misplace the things they store there. From Disney scripts and Hollywood memorabilia to rare cars, read on to see some of the most valuable items ever found in abandoned storage units. All dollar values in US dollars unless otherwise stated.
Former Storage Wars star Barry Weiss got a big hit in one of his earlier appearances on the show after bidding $275 (£184) on a unit filled with salon supplies in 2010. What at first appeared to be a total flop turned into a huge win when Weiss discovered a 1928 Marshall and Wendell Salesman piano amid the products. The instrument was valued at between $10,000 and $12,000 (£6.7k-£8k).
As featured on US TV show Auction Hunters, one bidder travelled to Texas and walked away with thousands of dollars’ worth of antiques in 2011. The most notable finds were a range of guns, including a Winchester buffalo rifle, and antique slot cars. The haul was estimated to be worth around $20,000 (£12.3k).
A Storage Wars bidder in Southern California chanced upon an incredible deal in 2017, buying a locker that was filled with vintage videos and game hardware plus cartridges. For this lucky buyer, the games were valued at more than $50,000 (£40.6k) – just enough for the buyer to call it one of his “best ever” buys. We can only imagine what his other top buys are worth.
In 2010, during a memorable episode of Storage Wars, a large cache of newspapers dating back to the day after Elvis Presley died (17 August 1977; he died on 16 August) were found in a storage unit. The papers were all in excellent condition and offered a flashback to the day the world lost The King. What originally looked like a regular stash of papers was eventually valued at an almighty $90,000 (£60.3k).
Sometimes storage hunters buy a locker knowing what’s inside, and when a Dallas man spent $300 (£215) on a unit he was looking forward to getting his hands on a selection of used Hyundai auto parts. But there was also an unexpected bonus thrown in, as his locker included a complete collection of Sports Illustrated magazines in excellent condition, including some autographed copies. The magazines were in such great shape in fact that the buyer made a tidy $100,000 (£72k) when he put them up for sale.
According to Dave Hester (pictured), presenter of Storage Wars, one of his best finds came from a storage unit he’d bought for $750 (£539). It turned out to contain a painting by impressionist artist Jack Wilkinson Smith, titled The Golden Pool, which Hester said he went on to sell for $155,000 (£111k).
Two storage units in Virginia sold for a combined cost of $27,000 (£16.6k) in November 2011, making the lot one of the priciest storage auction bids in history. While bidders didn’t know the exact contents, they knew it would be valuable as the lockers were formerly owned by a Second World War general. They contained a number of priceless military-related antiques, many of which dated all the way back to the Civil War, as reported by StorageAuctionCentral.com. It proved to be money well spent, when among the pieces were multiple documents signed by US presidents, a cane belonging to Harry Truman and rare artwork, hiking the total value of the contents up to somewhere around $200,000 (£123k).
In series three of Storage Wars, which aired in 2012, star Darrell Sheets, also known as 'The Gambler', took a risk when he spent $3,600 (£2.3k) on a storage locker. But his punt paid off when he found the unit was full of original art by Frank Gutierrez. The collection of art was estimated to be worth $300,000 (£188k).
It’s not only professional storage hunters who can win big with mystery units. A homeless couple was looking for furniture to add to their Arizona desert camp when they found an auction locker that came with a “ratty old couch”, so they made a $10 (£7.20) bid. Nobody else was interested so the couple won the lot and on going through the items they found a teddy bear full of dollar bills adding up to $300,000 (£215k). The pair kept the cash, paid their taxes and used some of the money to hire a lawyer to defend their claim to the find.
Storage Wars TV stars Dan and Laura Dotson hit the headlines in 2011 when they sold a storage unit for $1,000 (£614) with no idea of its contents. The container turned out to contain an antique pirate chest stuffed with Spanish pieces of eight worth $500,000 (£307k), making it “the find of a lifetime” according to the auctioneers.
The joy of a blind auction is that you never know what you’re going to get, and in 1989 a couple from Long Island, New York spent $100 (£58) on a mystery unit. Unbelievably, this is what the couple discovered inside: a custom 1976 Lotus Espirit sports car that had featured in the 1977 James Bond movie The Spy Who Loved Me. Having never seen a Bond film, the couple sought to renovate the car and repair its dented roof, and it was only then that truckers towing the vehicle revealed the true value of the auto. The Lotus eventually sold to an anonymous buyer at a Sotheby’s auction in 2013, who turned out to be none other than Tesla CEO Elon Musk. He bought the car for $997,000 (£663k).
Back in 2011, 40,000 pieces of Hollywood memorabilia were found in an abandoned storage locker near Orange, California, and it contained Disney film cells, original Tim Burton artwork and autographed work. The previous owners of the collection were described as “well-known motion picture industry executives” who had amassed the memorabilia cache over many years. Altogether the collection was believed to have a value of around $1 million (£614k), and items sold off as 400 different lots through sites including liveauctioneers.com and proxibid.com.
In 2011, the winner of a storage auction in California lucked out when the locker was found to contain a near-mint condition copy of Action Comics #1. The comic book, which had been stolen from Hollywood star Nicolas Cage's home back in 2000, went on to sell for a whopping $2.16 million (£1.3m), making it the first comic book ever to fetch more than $2 million (£1.2m) at auction.
When a Florida radio station purchased a locker containing “documents and paper” for an estimated $300 (£246) in the late 2000s, it had no idea what was in store. These bundles of files turned out to be photographs, musical arrangements, handwritten lyric sheets, and even royalty cheques belonging to music sensations The Beach Boys. After an eight-year court battle, which involved the band members trying to reclaim the material, the contents of the unit were appraised at between $6 million and $8 million (£4m-£5.3m) and sold through a sealed bid auction in 2013.
Now take a look at some priceless treasures people didn't know they owned