It's the holiday season! I love this time of year! Lots of great food, shopping, visiting with friends and family, and things to do. Mostly work, but I try to sprinkle in a couple of fun things as well.
I also won another storage locker! Yaaaay! I found a nice small 5x5 that wasn't stuffed full of things. I enjoyed my first locker, but at 10x5 it was just too big. We just aren't ready for that amount of stuff that we'd have to go through quickly so it doesn't overwhelm our little house. What made me bid on it was not just the size, but a specific box I saw in the unit. It was an Everybody Loves Johnny Ringo boot box. They make some very nice cowboy boots that, even used, can go for a couple hundred dollars. So, I took a chance and bid $30 and won. That was the 21st of November. I went and cleared it out on the 22nd. Yep. The day before Thanksgiving. That might have been a little tight. I had to go through everything and get it all cleaned up and dealt with in one day. Mostly because I didn't want to deal with it on T-day.
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| This is the picture I based my decision off of |
on the 22nd, I grabbed my coat, and my tripod for my phone (I'm learning how to film myself clearing out storage units in hopes of future YouTube videos for fun), and headed over to the storage facility to see what I'd bought.
Normally, you have to pay the storage facility the amount you won the locker for as well as a cash deposit of about $100 that you get back after you clean everything and sweep it clean. This particular location didn't have a cleaning deposit, so that was one less thing to worry about.
As we pulled up to the building housing the unit, I saw an old beat-up car outside the door with a dog in the back seat waiting patiently. When we entered the building, I saw a unit with the door a third of the way open and someone changing while talking on her cell phone.
When I got into the unit, the first box I got into was the Johnny Ringo box. Now, I'd say 90% of the time, whatever the box says on the outside is not what's in the inside. This was no exception. When I opened it, I found it full of sports cards. Baseball, Football, Hockey, Hydro racing, and Desert Storm cards. There were several hundred. A cursory glance through them showed a lot of junk cards. Nothing of interest. Mostly 90s and nothing special. It took me maybe 20 minutes to empty the unit out. I chatted with another very nice lady named Cathy who was emptying a 10x30! She was retired and did this for fun and profit. She had some great pointers and was just a pleasure to chat with.
When I got everything out I swept the floor and headed home. I got everything inside and got started. As you may guess, even though there wasn't a lot of stuff in the unit, it's amazing how much stuff you can fit in a bag, or a tote, etc.! I spent a couple of hours combing through all the things. The only thing I couldn't get into was a lockbox that ended up containing old birthday cards and miscellaneous items. I ended up asking a friend to get it open. He was the one to point out that it was a gun box. There were a handful of things that were worth reselling and the rest was either Goodwill or the dump. Almost all the clothing went to Goodwill except this fantastic suit!
That purple is very vibrant in regular light and the suit is darker. It looks like it was tailor made. Not sure it will ever sell, but I'm giving it a try. There ended up being a ridiculous amount of cards in this unit. So many.
I sold almost all the cards for $40 local pickup. There were also quite a few non sports trading cards.
So, let's talk about the person who owned the locker. He graduated in 2004 and sometime around 2006-2007 he read the book The Secret. It seems to have been a fairly important part of his life for a while. I believe this because there were notebooks full of sentences written over and over like: I have won the lottery, I have won the lottery, i have won the lottery, etc. If you are not familiar with The Secret, check out this link. I personally am not a fan. Lots of pseudoscientific nonsense that can make things worse for you and your mental health. He seems to have been somewhat primed for it though. There were lots of packs of tarot cards, some sage, lots of incense, and a very nice crystal ball. He loved big cats. Lions, tigers, and Panthers. He loved them enough to have bought a 12 plate set for decoration.
I know he met someone in his early 20s and fell in love. They had a baby and lived together for an unknown number of years. He got into some kind of insurance that required him to make cold calls. There were a lot of unpaid medical bills (I don't look inside, I'm mostly looking for something like a passport, wallet, tax returns or something of value that needs to be returned). As happens in life, something changed and she took the little one and moved to Arizona. I believe it's about this time he sliced off part of his life. He stored some suits that no longer fit him, his lions, and tigers and panthers, all his sports cards, a Lego model of Fast and the Furious he was working on, all his tarot cards, a beautiful compass, a fake rolex (inser pic here) and most disconcerting, his meds. There was a lot more, but you get the drift. It just felt very specific.
As is becoming usual with these units, I wondered what happened to the person who owned it. So I looked him up on Facebook. He did move and he seems fine. Happy even. Or, if not happy, at least willing to continue on and try to figure it all out. I know this is a lot of guessing and projection, I'm sure, but it's interesting to me to imagine other people's lives. I'm always rooting for them.
