Real-life 'Storage Wars' taking place in Abilene
One man's stuff and nonsense is another man's treasure.
It's a turn of phrase that never seemed so true as it did Wednesday at an auction at Abilene's Stor & Lok self-storage system at 490 N. Pioneer Drive.
Some 25 bidders showed up for the auction, despite two other auctions scheduled Wednesday morning, too. It was a compress that would have been unbelievable to the co-owner of the facility, Roy Laughlan, a few years ago, when six or seven bidders was the norm. That was before the 2010 initial of A&E's "Storage Wars," a reality television show that follows a group of storage auction bidders who upon to find treasures in abandoned storage units.
The airing of the show immediately changed the business of selling the contents of units with malefactor payments, said Rhonda Cates, Stor & Lok manager.
"There's been a lot of increased interest since the show," she said, "people started occupation all of a sudden, asking when we were having the auctions. It's opened a lot of people's eyes."




