Auction Hunters: New Orleans

Auction Hunters aired an episode tonight 4/11 that was filmed in New Orleans back in October.   Here are our thoughts about the whole thing:

Brian:  I am SO surprised they only found a single airboat!!!

Let's face it......we find at least 5 airboats per unit down here....I mean....we sell them by the dozen to local children who turn them into lawn art!!!  On a slow day....you might find one...or two....but then you ALWAYS get lucky and find the mid-16th century plague armor WITH fully functional projectile weapons!!!  So....no biggie on only finding a handful of stupid airboats!!!  But.....I DIGRESS.....

Now I don't mean to sound like a killjoy....but I tend to wonder....little lie...BIG LIE!  

First....they were NOT in New Orleans.....Waveland, MS is NOT New Orleans!!!  (No offense to our brothers and sisters to the East.....we love you guys...and have trudged around in the same mud and came out victorious on the other side!!!)  But if you are going to lie about WHERE you were.....well then.....little lie....big lie!

Second....I am SO tired of the fact that they find weapons in every other unit!!!!  I guess there is a chance....that they could be so very lucky ALL THE TIME....but what are the odds!  They should buy the Mega Millions Lottery Tickets every day!!!

Third.....Waveland...(and again nothing but respect for you great people, truly...)....was literally wiped off the face of the planet when Katrina came through in 2005.....and I mean clean.....!  It hurt to see the pics that came out of our neighbors in MS.....especially Waveland.  Again.....how lucky of them to find such wonderful items, historical and expensive, in a relatively new facility in an area that lost EVERYTHING a few years ago!  I mean....really......who is going to leave their 1800th century dueling pistols in it's case in a closed nightstand drawer either way!!!  But again.....I DIGRESS....

Fourth......did I mention how surprised I was when they only found a single airboat!!!!

Fifth.....I can't wait for the Lexington/Concord episode where they find an original Minuteman's firearm used agains the redcoats!!!  Or when they go to Philadelphia and find yet another undiscovered copy of the Constitution of the United States of America rolled up in a nightstand in the middle of a bunch of clothing boxes and bags!

A quick shout out to our friend Danny....(who took the unit with the Coke machine).....he did really well on that unit....despite the shenanigans surrounding him!  I used to love watching those guys....but now I know that it is all staged....and I am surely not going to waste my time watching ever again....we are busy living this life, making money with units....despite the fact that we don't find $12,000 weapons or a totally assembled 1969 Chevelle. (I am not condemning all shows, but this one was a slam dunk in the "against" category!)  (And by the way, a sidenote from Rebecca, who says that both cars and weapons are on the "remove from unit before auction" list that most of our auctioneers follow, so we CAN'T find them!)  We do it with determination and skill and hard work.....just like a bunch of other people do every day!  And we love it....wouldn't have it any other way.  You take the good with the bad.....and trust me....there is bad....just ask anyone who does this for a living when the cameras are NOT rolling!  I wish them luck....they have a very entertaining show for sure....and who knows.....maybe I will buy a unit tomorrow and find an antique firearm that works like a charm and magically is worth $12,000!!!

Rebecca:  Wow... Brian pretty much covered that! ... but I'll add a couple of things.

One:  If you're wondering why we weren't featured on the show, it was kind of a bummer for us too.  This all went down last October, and Allen and Ton were here for over a week.  They stayed long enough to go to a Saints game, in fact.  We were super excited that they were coming and at the time I talked to Allen pretty regularly.  We were also in negotiations with Gurney, the production company for Auction Hunters, to be the hosts of a new show they were working on, and as far as we were told we were one of the front-running partnerships for that job.  So... when the very producers who had been talking to us on the phone arrived, as well as Allen and Ton, we were excited to meet them.  No dice.  We offered to take them out for gumbo, oysters, coffee & beignets, you know, all the things that good New Orleanians show their guests.  Not only were we given kind of the cold shoulder, but it went a step further with a "we can't tell you where we will be, because you might show up just to get on TV."     Um, hello... you're already talking to us about our own show-- why would we jeopardize that by upsetting you just for a couple of minutes?    Sigh.  Long story short, they attended 4 auctions while they were in town.   One was in Waveland (probably an hour and a half or more East of us), which is the one they aired tonight,  one was a container auction in Baton Rouge (about an hour West of us), one was somewhere in North Louisiana (probably 3 or 4 hours North of us), and the final one was a facility we frequent pretty often.    More on that in a second.   So, Allen sends me this message saying "we would have thought that if you did this for a living for real, we would have seen you at one of these other auctions."   And honestly, I guess he has a point saying that--  I see where they're trying to get honest-to-God bidders and not random extras (which is one of many reasons they are a zillion times better than Storage Hunters) -- but, I guess he also doesn't realize that unlike in California, we have enough auctions around us that we don't have to travel more than 9 miles in any given direction unless we choose to.

Two:  The Waveland auction, the one that was shown on TV was considered to be a TOTAL BUST by Auction Hunters and Gurney.   Despite them making every effort to NOT advertise where they were going to be, the auctioneer clearly didn't see THAT as being in his best financial interest so he advertised it, both on his sign and his website, and with a tweet.  Here is that tweet, for your information:

JDL Auctions
The producers from Spike TVs hit show "Auction Hunters" have claimed an interest in filming our storage auctions set for October 20th! We are working out the details now, and we are asking that our South Mississippi auction fans send them their response to possibly having our storage auctions featured on the show. @auctionhunters or @spiketv and send them a post.
Like · · September 30 at 3:45pm

So, from an Auction Hunter perspective, here they are spending thousands and thousands of dollars to shoot this, and they have their own accomplice (the auctioneer) thwart them.  Oh, and btw, I have NEVER seen an auctioneer wear a microphone around here.  Ever.  Granted, I don't know that auctioneer because we don't go that far, but I'm super curious to find out whether that was something the show wanted him to do for sound, or if he was showing off, or if he thought his advertising was going to get more people, or whatever.

We didn't recognize any of the bidders, except for our friend Danny (more on THAT in a second), but I'm not sure what that means.  It's hard to say because we don't GO to those auctions.   I'm sure some of those people were just looky loos, and some of them may have been planted (I've heard that the woman who bought the red truck, for example, was caught letting the AH staff load her stuff into THEIR trailers...  so, who knows if they bought it from her, or whatever)...   but at least we know, and can say, with absolutely certainty that Danny is one of us and does what we do.

Three:   The one location they visited in Metairie/Jefferson (Still not ONE auction in New Orleans proper, which is highly strange because there are several locations in New Orleans that DO cooperate with television cameras, Sano-Stor-All, as an example... where some of the ones they tried to come to here, did not).   is one that we go to all the time.   The auction was on a Friday morning, and I remember that because it was the same day as my Grandfather's funeral.  Out of town.   I actually spent hours trying to figure out a way where I could do both, but there was just no way because I had an hour drive to the services and back.    I actually got a second message from Allen saying something like "if you were really legit, you would have been there"  and at that point I stopped trying to explain things to him because I cared not.  It's a shame because I really enjoyed talking to him and we haven't really chatted since.  Allen, if you're out there-- we welcome you to discuss with us again!

Four:  We heard from SEVERAL people that Ton got KICKED OUT of the auction in Jefferson Parish (we have Parishes, not Counties)....  because he wouldn't sign in properly, or gave attitude when someone told him something about a camera, or something like that.   I even heard one person say he wouldn't remove a weapon... whatever the reason, he was absolutely asked to leave the property and not allowed back on.  Allen did the entire auction by himself, and Ton went next door to a local shopping store to entertain himself.    VERY sorry I missed that one!   We are trying to get an exact story from parties actually there, so we will update you on that if and when it happens!

Five:  (I guess I have to make this my last one because I can't have more than Brian!) ....  Above all else, we are happy that Auction Hunters decided to come to New Orleans and film here.  We wish they would have shown more of our ACTUAL city, as opposed to every outlying area, but we still appreciate the gesture.  We're excited to see the 2nd episode of this 2 episode series.  We're very sad that we missed the auctions, but we had absolutely no way of knowing that one would be a container auction, and they would all be out of town, minus the one we missed for extenuating circumstances.  We wish it would have gone down differently, as we've always been fans of the show and really wanted a chance, if not even to be on it, to SEE IT and how it worked, up close.   We're thrilled for Danny Daw, who is a legitimately super nice guy (and a SUPERSTAR personality)... and look forward to working more with him in the future.  We just did a swap with him this morning after we each bought a unit from the same tenant and couldn't be happier with the results.  He calls himself Danny the Pillager (what a character) and is moving his store from Hammond to Slidell in just about a month or so.  We hope to have an interview with him soon and a feature about what he's doing in his store, which will include some live auctions.   We know now that Auction Hunters (just like every other TV show) DEFINITELY adds a lot more to make their show "juicier" and more exciting, and we really don't think they NEED to do that, but hey, we think dentures and sex toys and weaves and things like that are interesting, so I guess it's to each his own.  We all have a place in this business and we're happy to all work together.    I guess the bottom line is just to keep networking and making contacts where you can, BUT still manage to trust your instincts.  If something looks too good to be true, it is.  Don't go spend all your money at auction just because you saw someone find an AIRBOAT.    

Until next time,

Storage Heroes

PS - Allen and Ton, we still want a show-down!  Hopefully one day, in the future, after we've competed with you after we're famous from whatever project we're working from (and we've kicked your collective asses),  we can all laugh about it over some beers!