Storage Wars

Storage Wars
Title Card (Seasons 1-2)
Genre	Reality
Starring	Dave Hester Darrell Sheets Jarrod Schulz Brandi Passante Barry Weiss Dan Dotson Laura Dotson Thom Beers
Theme music composer	Andy Kubiszewski
Opening theme	"Money Owns This Town"
Country of origin	United States
Original language	English
No. of seasons	3
No. of episodes	60 (list of episodes)
Production
Executive producers	Robert Sharenow and Elaine Frontain Bryant, Thom Beers and Philip D. Segal
Producer	Dolph Scott
Running time	21–22 minutes
Production company	Original Productions
Original release
Network	A&E
Release	December 1, 2010 (2010-12-01) – present

Promo for Storage Wars

Storage Wars is an American reality television series on the A&E Network that premiered in 2010. The show features auctioneers Dan Dotson and Laura Dotson, as well as auction hunters Dave Hester, Darrell Sheets, Barry Weiss, and the team of Jarrod Schulz and Brandi Passante. Executive Producer and Creator Thom Beers serves as off-screen narrator.

When rent is not paid on a storage locker for three months in California, the contents are sold by an auctioneer as a single lot of items. The show follows professional buyers who purchase the contents based only on a five-minute inspection of what they can see from the door when it is opened. The goal is to turn a profit on the merchandise.

Season one of Storage Wars consisted of 19 episodes, 17 of which were filmed at various self storage facilities throughout Southern California. Two special episodes were filmed on location at a pair of StorageOne facilities in Las Vegas, Nevada. The show has enjoyed ratings success, and its second season premiere attracted 5.1 million total viewers, making it the most-watched program in A&E's history to that point.

A spin-off of Storage Wars titled Storage Wars: Texas made its debut on A&E on December 6, 2011. The series features a new cast of bidders and an auctioneer. A second spin-off set in New York is in the works.

Storage Wars can be seen internationally as well, as AETN International has sold the series to several channels in Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Sweden, Finland and Norway.

Storage Wars and its spin-off series Storage Wars: Texas have each been renewed for another twenty-six episode season, with that season officially premiering on June 5, 2012.

Participants

Main Buyers

Jarrod Schulz (left) & Brandi Passante (middle) with interviewer

• Dave Hester - "The Mogul". Hester began the series owning Newport Consignment Gallery in Costa Mesa and the Rags to Riches thrift store, until he closed them in June 2011. He now operates his own auction house, Dave Hester Auctions. Hester serves as the main antagonist in the show. He will not sell weapons from a unit he has purchased, turning them in to local authorities for destruction. Hester sometimes drives up the bidding to assert his dominance and has a son Dave Jr. who appears on the show working alongside him. Hester's signature move is to bid loudly "YUUUP!", seemingly at the last moment, sometimes maddening the other bidders. He even has the slogan imprinted on his trucks, T-shirts, and hats. Barry Weiss gave him the first of such hats with the predominant "YUUUP!" featured on the front of the hat in the episode "Stairway to Hemet" in hopes to "...save us a all a little bit of noise pollution, and instead of yelling 'YUUUP!' you just point to your hat".
• Darrell Sheets - "The Gambler". Sheets appears alongside his son, Brandon. A 30 year-plus storage auction veteran, he makes his living by selling items from his purchased lockers at swap meets. He is known for frequently bashing and occasionally clashing with Dave, as well as his catchphrase "This is the WOW factor!", when coming across potentially highly valuable items. In one episode, Sheets mocked Hester's business by having Brandon wear a hat that read "Newport Con Gallery", resulting in a nose-to-nose confrontation with Hester, while in another, Brandon wore a shirt that simply said, "Rags to Riches and Now and Then Thrift store sucks!". He lived with his wife, son and young granddaughter, Zoe. In "Bowling For Dollars", Darrell said he was in the middle of a divorce. Later in the episode, he said "I've got a new woman in my life and she loves jewelery". In an interview, Sheets indicated that some of his biggest finds in lockers included a sizable comic book collection, four drawings by Pablo Picasso and a letter written by Abraham Lincoln that sold for over $15,000. In "Unlocked: Sell High", Darrell revealed that he once uncovered a plastic-wrapped human corpse in a storage locker. He was interviewed by police and it was determined that the previous owner of the locker had murdered his wife and left her in the unit.
• Jarrod Schulz & Brandi Passante - "The Young Guns". Schulz and Passante own and operate the Now and Then thrift store in Orange, California and have the least substantial financial resources. They opened the shop after Jarrod's business of buying storage units and selling the contents at swap meets overran their home. Brandi started to attend the auctions when she was not sure if Jarrod could be trusted. Jarrod also is a co-owner of a clothing line, Outlaw Apparel, which he prominently wears on the show, and he and Brandi have two children together. Although there is much confusion about their marital state, Brandi confirmed in Unlocked: Buy Low that they were not married; while Jarrod stated he was "the most married man on earth."
• Barry Weiss - "The Collector". Weiss and his brother owned a produce company until he retired and is only looking for a few collectable items to keep. He sells or donates everything else. While Barry is a lifelong antique collector, he had no involvement in buying storage units until his friend and Storage Wars executive producer/narrator Thom Beers suggested he join the show. Barry is the best financed of the group and by his own admission is the only one not in it for financial profit. He is known for the unusual antics he brings to the auctions, such as bringing in psychics to help him figure out a locker's contents, odd disguises and outfits he'll sometimes wear, and even attaching a camera to a remote control airplane to look into a locker. He will not sell any fur articles in a unit he purchases, instead donating them to charity or giving them to another buyer, such as in an early episode when he gave a couple of fur coats to Dave Hester, who then sold them at his retail store.

Occasionally Featured Buyers

• Bill Archer. Archer appeared in only one episode, "Young With The Gun". He had just left his previous job to be a storage unit buyer, a move that Barry questioned. Archer eventually won a unit. Afterwards, he received tips from Jarrod on how he should go about searching for the prime treasures in the unit and determining their value. Archer has been seen in the background since his initial appearance, but hasn't again been featured.
• Mark Balelo. Balelo is the owner of a chain of thrift stores that he has been operating for over twenty years. He appeared three times in the second season and is set to return in series three. Mockingly referred to as "Rico Suave" by Brandi due to his flashy wardrobe and money-flaunting buying style, Balelo is known for bringing more than $50,000 to each auction. In one of his more memorable moments on the show, which also exposed his ignorance, he found a Nintendo Entertainment System, which he called an NES-001 (which is the part number of every United States NES console) claiming it was "the first Nintendo DS ever built", and he believed it was worth as much as $13,000, because he "saw one with five games go for that much on the internet". However, an appraisal found that the item was common and not in working condition and thus worth only $10. It is belived the auction he was reffering to was an auction that came with a boxed copy of "Stadium Events", one of the most valuable games in existence.
• Nabila Haniss. Haniss made her name after purchasing a storage unit that contained items belonging to socialite Paris Hilton. Although a non-regular buyer at the auctions, she appeared five times in the second season and is set to return in season three. Haniss has openly expressed her disdain for the regular buyers on the show, who she refers to as a "traveling circus", and resents their intrusion into her "side of town", i.e., the more upscale parts of L.A. and Orange County. She has more affinity and is friendlier with Dave Hester, however, Dave guardedly views her as still a rival.
• Jeff Jarred. An owner of an antique/thrift store that he runs with his daughter in Lancaster, CA, and a Little League umpire. Jeff has accused auctioneer Dan Dotson of playing favorites among the buyers, a claim Dotson denies. Jeff first appears in season three and serves as a replacement for Dave Hester, who was absent from several episodes due to his outside business interests.

Other Cast Members

• Dan & Laura Dotson: The husband and wife auctioneer team run American Auctioneers, and administer the auctions at the various storage units. Dan has been a professional auctioneer since 1974. He and Laura regularly exhibit a friendly rapport with all of the main buyers, often having to keep their peace amongst the sometimes rowdy and hotly-competitive bidders.

• Thom Beers: The executive producer and narrator of the show. Beers provides a quick explanation of the show's premise at the beginning, and does a recap of the featured buyers' profits or losses at the end of each episode.

Production

Opening Titles

Every episode opens with the narrator, Thom Beers, setting the basic premise for the series: "When storage units are abandoned, the treasures within are put up for auction." In Episodes 2, 3, 4 and 7 of season one, an extra line was added to the opening narration: "because in this high-stakes game, it's get rich or die buyin'." The narration is followed by the preview of the upcoming episode, followed by the opening titles. In the opening titles, the sequence of titles begins at Dave, then Darrell, then Brandi and Jarrod, then Barry, and finally at Dan and Laura. While Laura always appeared in the opening titles, her highlighted face and name were not added to the credits until episode 11 of Season 1. Dave Hester Jr. and Brandon Sheets also appear in the opening titles, but are not highlighted and credited. The show's theme song, "Money Owns This Town", which was written and recorded specifically for the show, plays during the opening.

Criticism

While some have speculated that some of the units have been stocked by producers, an A&E publicist said, "There is no staging involved. The items uncovered in the storage units are the actual items featured on the show." Executive producer Thom Beers has stated that the vast majority of the storage lockers investigated during production contain nothing of interest and therefore do not appear in the final show. Beers has explained that the series avoids delving into back stories of the lockers' original owners because, "All you see is misery there, and I didn't want to trade on that."

Ratings

The first season premiere episode drew 2.1 million viewers and the show was A&E's top-rated non-fiction show for 2010, with an average of 2.4 million viewers. The season two premiere consisted of back-to-back new episodes of the show; the second show drew 5.1 million total viewers and was the highest rating for an episode of a series in A&E history. The combined season premiere outperformed competing original episodes of NBC Love in the Wild and ABC's Primetime Nightline.

Critical reception

Critical response was mixed, with Mary McNamara of the Los Angeles Times calling Storage Wars "a strangely uplifting show — hope being one of the many things one can apparently find in an abandoned storage unit," and Neil Genzlinger of The New York Times called the series "an especially entertaining addition to the genre." Brian Lowry of Variety said that "'Wars' should have been left in storage, indefinitely." Writing for Slate, Troy Patterson gave a mixed review, referring to the series as "trash TV" as well as "trivial and magnetic." Ellen Gray of the Philadelphia Daily News suggested "if there's an acquisitive bone in your body, you should probably steer clear."

Episodes

See also: List of Storage Wars episodes

Home releases

Storage Wars: The Complete Season 1
Set details			DVD Layout
19 episodes 3-disc DVD set 1.66:1 non-anamorphic aspect ratio Languages: English (Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo)			DISC ONE (7 episodes): "High Noon in the High Desert" - "The Old Spanish Standoff" DISC TWO (7 episodes): "Midnight in the Gardena Good and Evil" - "Trouble the Oil" DISC THREE (5 episodes): "Makings of a Mogul" - "Live and Let Bid"
DVD release dates
Region 1	Region 2	Region 4
August 30, 2011	June 11, 2012	—

Storage Wars: Volume 2
Set details			DVD Layout
14 episodes 2-disc DVD set 1.66:1 non-anamorphic aspect ratio Languages: English (Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo)			DISC 1: "Santa Ana Street Fight" - "Fire in the Hole" DISC 2: "San Burrito" - "FU Dog Day Afternoon"
DVD release dates
Region 1	Region 2	Region 4
February 14, 2012	—	—

Storage Wars: Volume 3
Set details			DVD Layout
16 episodes 2-disc DVD set 1.66:1 non-anamorphic aspect ratio Languages: English (Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo)			DISC 1: "I'm The New Mogul" - "Scoot A Toot Toot" DISC 2: "The Empire Strikes Out" - "Operation Hobo"
DVD release dates
Region 1	Region 2	Region 4
July 17, 2012	—	—

See also

• Auction Hunters, a similar show on Spike
• Storage Hunters, a similar show on truTV
• Storage Wars: Texas, a spin-off show on A&E

External links

• Official website at A&E
• Storage Wars at IMDb