Scotts Valley had a brush with Hollywood when the cast and crew of A&E Television’s show “Storage Wars” filmed an episode Nov. 11 through 14 at the Storage Depot on Mount Hermon Road.
The show, which follows a group of professional auction hunters, as well as a husband-and-wife team of auctioneers, travels to storage facilities throughout the country, bidding on items left inside storage units by tenants who have left their rental fees unpaid.
According to owner Scott Norton and manager Judy Ball, the producers of the show reached out to them about the possibility of filming at the Storage Depot, located behind Kmart, in September.
“It was my favorite show to begin with,” Norton said. “Now it’s more so.
“The hardest thing was keeping it a secret.”
Though they had planned to auction off the contents of five unpaid units that month, they agreed to delay the auction until November to accommodate the production schedule.
According to Ball, when renters don’t pay their storage fees, after 65 days, the facility owner can auction off the items inside. The money raised in the auction, after paying off the delinquent fees, goes into a trust account for the former tenant, who has a year to claim it before the state takes possession of the funds.
Arriving in spite the drizzly weather, the people who make up Storage Depot’s small group of auction regulars were surprised to find cameras rolling and celebrity bidders afoot.
“(The regulars) were so excited,” Ball said. “They took pictures, got autographs.”
Norton said he was impressed by the friendly demeanor and personable attitude of the television personalities.
“The crew and actors were really nice and seemed true to their characters on television,” he said. “We had a lot of fun with them.”
Norton particularly said he enjoyed seeing the radio-controlled helicopter that the camera crews use to get the show’s aerial footage.
Though the Storage Depot employees were sworn to secrecy about the show visiting their facility, Ball said she enjoyed seeing the customers who happened to drop by during the shoot as they recognized someone.
“It was so cute to see customers come in and go, ‘Oh my God! It’s Barry (Weiss)! It’s Barry!’” she said.
All fun aside, Ball said, once the bidding process began, the cast was all business.
“They’re a competitive bunch,” she said. “We let them film and stayed out of the way.”
“The minute the bidding started, that’s when their real characters come out,” Norton added with a laugh.
Norton added that having the cameras rolling during the auction didn’t interfere with the auction at all, as crews acted more as a fly on the wall.
“They were just having a good time,” he said. “That’s what makes it so nice — everybody’s just free to do what they want.”
Ball said she was impressed that the celebrity bidders used their own money for the bidding and were not bankrolled by the studio.
Hosting an auction is an expensive undertaking for a storage facility, Ball said, which is why most have only a few auctions a year, after accumulating multiple units to clear out at once.
Several factors typically affect the amount of money the units sell for at auction, including the gender of the former tenant, Ball said.
Women, she said, generally tend to have nicer things stored, so their units usually sell for more — up to $1,200, in some cases.
“(The auctions) actually make a lot more money for the tenants, whose things are being bid on,” Ball said. “They cost us a lot of money, but at least we get our units back.”
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