I just wanted to pass along some advise. I have been buying storage units for the past fifteen years. I hope someone can use this advise. If you buy a storage unit, make sure & fully go thru everything. I just bought a 10' x 20' unit on the 26th. Everything in here is older. The couple who had rented the unit had been paying on it for the past ten years until they suddenly stopped in February. I look for units where the renter has an old fashioned name like Mabel. This could be nothing or it could be a quality unit.
I knew or had an instinct that somewhere within the unit they had to have stored / hidden some jewelry. As I was cleaning the unit out on my third trip, I started to think that I had made a mistake. There were plenty of clothes, suitcases, & a few miscellaneous items including two 1921 Maytag roller washers w/ motors where I believed I could maybe make my $300 back. I had gone through the obvious places like the suitcases & I was coming up with junk. Some of the suitcases I could tell had been gone through & were missing their prior contents. Speaking of bodies, I did find a crematorium box of ashes of a person in here. I promptly gave these remains to the storage facility owner. I am very superstitious & I believe I treated the remains with respect.
Earlier tonight my wife decided she was going to help me go thru some boxes. Lo & behold she found the jewelry cache. It was hidden in a smaller sized box of albuterol nebulizer capsules. All of the goodies were in an old art deco purse. This includes three 14K white gold rings w/ diamonds, a 5.5 gram 14K yellow gold eagle pendant necklace & a larger bag filled with better quality costume & art deco jewelry. I believe one of the 14K rings has a .5 carat diamond. I need to get the rings appraised. This small purse paid for the entire unit plus. Whatever I make on the other items is pretty much pure profit.
What unfortunately happens & the point of my story is, older folks of lesser means tend to hide valuable things in unlikely places. Whatever the reason is, including greedy caretakers or relatives, you have to look thru everything imaginable to where a person of reasonable intellect, would hide something. This includes books & underneath items that look like they have no value.
Sometimes there is absolutely nothing of value to find of moderate value in a unit you purchase. The previous owners didn't hide anything. You have to get what you can with what is available. We go through all of the items & try to get rid of the junk. The sell-able items, we have yard sales where we give deals to everyone & then donate the rest to the local Boys & Girls Club Thrift Shop & to the Muscular Dystrophy Association. We get a tax deduction for our donations. I have bought units which ended up pretty much being nothing more than a donation & loss of time.
In the meantime, we have plenty of other boxes to go through from this unit including a few more Albuterol boxes.
