PhantomStranger

Hester was acting strange and petulant but it looked like the producers sprung a surprise on Laura with his appearance. They wanted to see what would happen if she didn't know he was coming and then melted down like they wanted.
I hope they did that shot as a gimmick for the series. Brandi ended up marrying a clone of her uncle.
They needed a villain and his return would drum up interest. The newer episodes without Barry had been painfully boring.

Gizmo

Thanks, another person to the block list.

madcougar

Why do people who haven't been to church in years (or ever) suddenly find Christ when the end is near?

Because they're desperate.

TheMovieman

And, they're still overvaluing their "finds."

ams

This plastic bag right here has over $20 worth of stuff in it. There are somewhere near 200 more random plastic bags full of stuff, so that means I just made a profit of $4,000!

Xiroteus

And in reality it's about $200 if they are lucky.

Gizmo

I like when they find a "like new" item and say it sells for $500 and BAM, $500 added to their total. If only all the things I paid for was worth exactly what I paid originally.

Xiroteus

That would be amazing!

They should base the totals on what they sold the stuff for however some of that stuff likely sits around for awhile.

It's funnier the more you know about something. These comics are ten dollars each!

You mean ten dollars a box? Unless it has something amazing it's not much more.

d2cheer

Very cool of you. He called you out and was right about what you said and now you act like a baby? But that is basically your MO. Block me too please.

BUT now that Hester is back I can start watching this again. I have not seen it for a long time and I really like Hester and this show needed him.

All the pissing and moaning about him I love it.

Deftones

I only got to watch the 2nd Hester episode (1st was screwed up due to weather), but he seemed like a very toned down version of himself.

d2cheer

I wonder if he is just a little bit humbled by how everything went down. I will have to DVR what is coming up I had no idea he was coming back.

Troy Stiffler

I'm in this business. I don't do storage sheds, because they're usually full of yard sale junk. But it's otherwise the same. I've been doing it since high school (13 years).

I've watched a handful of episodes. Got to say: most of these people are fucking stupid. They're mostly self-absorbed dickheads, with an inflated ego - because they're self-employed nobodies. Which is sooo true about sooo many people in this business.

It's extra train-wrecky for me, because I know the business so well. Bidding each other up on purpose is such a douche move. They're delusional about the value of things. Bidding up sheds packed with yard sale junk, in hopes they're going to find gold or something. These people would be eating out of dumpsters if they weren't making a few bucks off the reality-show part.

Xiroteus

For people not making money from a show it seems that unless you get very lucky possible profit would be lost getting rid of all the junk.

Bidding up with no intention to buy has always been a jerk move. Why would any normal person do that.

For the show I doubt any of this matters because of what the show pays them.

PhantomStranger

I have to imagine processing all of the junk is a hugely time-consuming manual operation. We've gotten hints of that from Hester and Ivey in the past. Hester mentioned he learned a lot about that when he was under court order to work at Salvation Army.

Traxan

I never got the bidding up part either. On the one hand, Dan has no motivation to stop it since he gets a piece of the sale, so if a $300 locker gets run up to $700, more for him. OTOH, he should not allow it.

As for bidding, I've read several times that Barry never bid with his money, the producers covered for him. That explains why he bought so many shit lockers.

But I've been to Brandy and Jarrod's store several times and they move a lot of stuff through there, especially furniture. Even the Hot Wheels eventually sold out. Why he sells old stereo equipment is a bit of a mystery to me.

emanon

ftfy

Jacoby Ellsbury

You bid someone up so they have less capital to buy the next unit. You don't want your competition making a killing. If they bring $5K and are buying $1500 worth of merch. lockers for $300 all day they have plenty of leeway on overall risk for the day and plenty of cash to spend on the unit you want. If there is a dozen lockers and you can pump them up to $1000 on those $1500 lockers then after they have 4 lockers they only have $1K left not $3800 and their potential profit for the day is about $2K instead of $5K so they are a lot more risk averse

Jay G.

Keep in mind that this is a show, and the participants know that they're being filmed, so they may act differently than if they weren't being filmed and bidding.

Also, the talking head segments are recorded after the fact, so you may have instances where two people are genuinely interested in a locker, but the losing one later says that they meant to lose and were just trying to "bid up" the winner.

Troy Stiffler

Storage shed auctions have become pretty hot around here. I think it has a lot to do with the show. All it takes is a few new people to pick up and start doing it - to cause bidding to go way up.

PhantomStranger

All it takes is two aggressive bidders to drive prices up. There are always accusations the auctioneers hire plants to drive bids up. We saw that on the other storage reality show.

madcougar

I would bet dollars to donuts that happens at every auction. A few years ago, I was trying to buy a car at auction in Houston. I hit about eight different auctions this one company was hosting over the course of two months. This one guy probably bid on about 12 different cars at EACH SINGLE AUCTION but never seemed to win one. Perhaps it was a coincidence, but I thought it was pretty weird.

PhantomStranger

The auction game is a pretty scummy industry, filled with all sorts of people.

Jacoby Ellsbury

Sounds like shill bidding. Probably in cahoots with someone profiting off the sale of the vehicles.

Traxan

Watched the second ep of the Brandi and Jarrod show. Man, as much as I like those two, there isn't an honest second in this show. It's so scripted it makes SW look like free-flowing spontaneity.

Gizmo

It was pretty terrible. I'm out.