Thrill of the hunt draws crowd to Kent auction

The excitement at Kent’s Door-to-Door Storage on Dec. 16 was palpable.

The weather was cold and damp, and topping it off, there was a cutting wind.

But that didn’t deter the crowd of about 60 who showed up, hot for a treasure.

Dec. 16 was the day of an upaid-storage auction, and the bidders were ready for some action, wads of cash in pocket.

The objects of such intense speculation were four plywood storage units, each the size of a small closet.

Under the watchful eye of auctioneer Thomas Hayward, the bolts for the first one were cut and the door was slowly opened, as the audience held its collective breath.

“Whoa – that is full,” someone murmured as all eyes gazed upon a solid wall of quilts and household debris.

“Let’s go!” Hayward shouted, not missing a beat. “Someone give me a hundred bucks for it!”

A hand went up.

So too did the bidding, with Hayward’s rapid-fire recitation of escalating numbers.

Three hundred; five hundred…

“SOLD!”

For Goldendale resident Carmen Knops, watching the action that morning, auctions like these are not unlike a hunt. You put your money down on something that could either be a bust – broken appliances, bedding and just plain junk – or a major find.

“We’ve gotten jewelry and cash cards and all sorts of stuff – treasures,” said Knops.

For her, as well as a number of others in the audience, these are the sales that keep them in business. Thanks to online services like Craigslist and Ebay, they’re merchants, selling the useable stuff and turning around a profit.

For Knops, these auctions are the difference between working for herself – or being under some manager’s thumb 40 hours a week.

“I don’t want to go back to work full time,” Knops said, grinning.

Has she encountered anything – ahem – unusual in her bidding wars?

“No bodies – thank God,” Knops said.

For auctioneer Hayward, who works on the national level, storage-unit auctions like these are what keep him on the road and working.

It’s a job the auctioneer enjoys – hopping from one state to the next, handling crowds of would-be buyers with an effortless flow of enunciated numbers, punctuated with a “SOLD!” at each end.

“I like running around, yeah,” said Hayward, who calls Reno, Nev., home. Often he’ll take son T.J., who is 13, with him, renting a fancy convertible to make the runs to the auctions where he presides. He’s got plenty of air miles.

The day before this auction at the Kent facility, which is Door-To-Door Storage’s national headquarters, Hayward was in San Diego, auctioning off storage units. The day before that, it was Denver. The day after this one, it was to be San Francisco.

The auctions happen wherever renters are defaulting on their storage units, or simply dropping off the radar and not coming back for their stuff.

Hayward is licensed to auction in every U.S. state – a distinction few auctioneers have. Most, he said, work in the local markets.

Thanks to the growth of two entities: the Internet and reality television; Hayward said he’s auctioning in front of bigger crowds these days.

eBay, Craigslist and similar online entities mean just about any treasure hunter can take part in the commerce. And thanks to “Storage Wars” on the A&E Network and “Auction Hunters” on Spike TV, growing numbers of people have been introduced to the excitement of finding treasure amid the detritus of household junk.

At today’s event, successful bidder Shannon Fettig struck pay dirt with her unit. Inspection of a vintage suitcase yielded a treasure trove of antique dolls, along with a nice collection of modern “I Love Lucy” Barbie dolls, complete with original packaging, that were located elsewhere in the unit.

“Oh yeah, you scored good,” Hayward said, as he watched Fettig and her family opening the unit.

Door To Door Storage is located at 6412 S. 216th St., Kent.

To learn more about this business, visit its Web site at www.doortodoorstorage.com. To learn more about Hayward’s national auctioneer business, visit www.thomashaywardauctioneers.com.