If you can imagine it, chances are that Darrell Sheets has found it in a storage locker.
The storage auction veteran has spent 36 years buying storage units without being able to tell exactly what is in them.
Some of the discoveries have been beyond bizarre.
“Every time you buy a storage locker, there’s something different,” he says. “It’s the only job we’ve ever had where every day is like Christmas. It’s full of surprises.
“We’ve found live snakes in a storage locker. I found naked pictures of my neighbour’s wife. You name it, we’ll find it.”
Did he sell the photos back to his neighbour to make a profit
“You learn to throw stuff like that in the trash because in the long run, karma comes back to bite you and I kinda like to ride the karma train.”
With his willingness to buy goods sight unseen, it is not surprising that Sheets’ nickname on the US reality show Storage Wars is The Gambler, but there is far more to it than luck.
“There are a lot of telltale signs you’ve got to look for,” he says. “Is there a lot of dust in the locker Is the lock old Did they pay a moving company to move it in There are a lot of things that help decide.”
His son Brandon works with him and says watching his dad inspired him to join the business.
“As a young kid, I would see the cool stuff he would buy and I’d get to go through it and see the money he would make on it. Over the years it just intrigued me a little bit and I moved forward with it and I’ve been with him ever since.”
Sheets started buying storage units after being fired from his landscape gardening job and he has developed a keen business sense.
“I don’t mean to sound arrogant but very rarely do we really lose on a locker. There’s always a way to turn it into a profit.”
One of his biggest scores is a childhood memory for Brandon.
“It was this locker full of comics that my dad got when I was about nine years old. It was estimated to be worth about a quarter to a half a million dollars and it’s one that’s always stuck with me. Today in the comic-book market, it would have been worth about $5.4 million.”
Buying a locker formerly owned by a runway model made Darrell and Brandon Sheets’ wives happy.
“Her locker was so absolutely phenomenal,” says Sheets. “There was every designer jewellery, clothing, furniture – it was such a great locker.”
But it’s not all comics and couture. Sheets
