People are endlessly fascinated by others peoples stuff – we like to peek inside other people’s houses and increasingly inside their self storage units as proven by the proliferation of TV programmes doing just that. It might be nice to dream of finding a fortune in gold coins or a priceless artwork but just what are the strangest items that have ever been discovered in a self storage unit?
An abandoned storage unit that had once belonged to Michael Jackson’s father, Joe Jackson was discovered to contain over 250 original songs written and sung by Michael Jackson that had never been released. A truly remarkable find that the new owner of the storage unit was able to cash in on because the songs were recorded when Michael was not under contract to a record label..
In the USA it is not weird or unusual to find guns and ammunition in a self storage unit but they are usually safely stored. Indeed with the wide choice of good self storage deals a storage unit is a good, secure place to store guns away from the home, especially if you have a young family. However, some units have been found to contain live hand grenades, requiring the bomb disposal experts to be called in.
In 2011, someone bought a storage unit and it’s contents at auction and discovered inside the first ever Superman Action Comics #1 issue. But far from this being the treasure trove the new owner initially thought, the comic had in fact been stolen eleven years earlier so was returned to the original owner.
In 2009, a rare 1937 Bugatti 57S was uncovered in a storage garage by the nephew of the original owner. It had been stored there since the 1950’s and, as far as anyone could tell, had not been used in all those intervening decades. It’s value at the time of discovery was thought to be over £6 million so that certainly was a treasure trove for the nephew who inherited it from his deceased uncle.
Now this has to be the worst nightmare of anyone opening a storage unit after many years is they don’t know what is inside. That is certainly a risk people take if they buy a unit without knowing what is inside. But this particular story is especially gruesome as a family had knowingly stored their grandmother’s body in a storage unit for over 17 years. It was meant to be a temporary arrangement until the funeral could be organised but it was only when the family were contacted about the unit being auctioned off that they came forward to claim the body. Weird!
Sometimes old storage units are actually filled with treasure and this did happen in one US storage unit which was found to contain half a million dollars in coins along with silver and gold bars. Now that would be enough to tempt the most risk-averse of us to take a punt on a storage auction.
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