12/22/2012   English German

  Edition # 99  
San Francisco, 12-22-2012


Figure [1]: An abandoned storage unit is auctioned off in "Storage Wars" and bidders are only allowed to peek inside briefly.

Angelika We keep discovering new television shows via Netflix streaming (Rundbrief 12/2010), most of which we'd probably never had found out about otherwise. Here's a selection of the craziest shows:

Firstly, there's the reality show "Storage Wars". I've reported previously that it is common for U.S. households to rent additional small storage spaces for unneeded junk (Rundbrief 11/2009). Now, California law says, that the content of these storage lockers can be auctioned off by the storage facility if the owner is more than three months behind on the rent payments. That's exactly what this show is about.

Potential buyers at the auction face a peculiar restriction: They are only allowed to peek into the locker that's about to be auctioned off from the outside, i.e. they can't open any moving boxes or dig further into the layers of items in the locker. When they're placing a bid at the auction, all they can rely on is their experience with the content of previously purchased lockers. Of course, most lockers only contain utterly worthless junk that should rather be disposed of immediately at at the local garbage dump. But often times, between items that no sane person would keep around, there may be a folder with valuable old baseball cards or a framed painting from a famed artist which is heavily sought after by art collectors. I've always loved stories about what people keep or throw away, and about finding treasured items in hidden attics. Not surprisingly, "Storage Wars" strikes a cord for me.

The auctions in the show are held mainly in southern California. Dan and Laura Dotson are the auctioneers who strive to find buyers for the contents of abandoned lockers. The rest of the lineup are professional buyers. For example, Dave Hester is a seasoned pro, who recently started running his own auction firm. He is often employing devious tactics to outbid other buyers, sometimes just to mess with them. Darell Sheets is another buyer whose day job it is to acquire merchandize in auctions and sell them for a profit. Then, there's a married couple, Jarrod Schulz und Brandi Passante, who own a thrift store. They typically only bid on typical household items and furniture and their budget is quite limited. Another buyer, Barry Weiss, bids for the fun of it and only has an eye on collector's items and antiques.

Another TV show, "Property Wars" goes even beyond offering other people's storage items. It auctions off entire foreclosed properties. The show is recorded in Arizona, the state that was hit hard economically a couple of years ago when the housing bubble forced many home owners into forclosure. The rules of the game are similar in that potential buyers aren't allowed to inspect forclosed homes from the inside. The winning bidder gets the property and hopes that they can flip it at a higher price later.

Figure [2]: This woman has been clipping coupons to acquire exorbitant amounts of toilet paper.

Another funny, although borderline crazy show is "Extreme Couponing", which portraits notorious tightwads in their quest to cut their grocery bill to almost zero, by maximizing their savings while exploiting store rebates. Michael has previously written about the ubiquitous store coupons in the U.S. (Rundbrief 03/2002). There's several coupon variants, some cut the price of an item by, say, 50 cents, others reduce the price of a second item by half or give it away for free, after the customer has bought the first one at full price. Where do savings enthusiasts get their coupons? Even with the Internet as market driver, coupons today are mostly distributed with the print edition of the Sunday paper. Grocery chains like Safeway are sending them out individually by mail as well.

Figure [3]: This coupon booklet is being delivered to our mailbox every Monday.

On Mondays, for example, we always find a booklet with coupons (Figure 3) issued by various stores in our mailbox. Various sites online offer coupon leaflets for printing at home, and recently, coupon smartphone apps have been popping up. Now, an "Extreme Couponer" is a person whose life revolves around filling binders with coupons and, when the time is right, marches down to the supermarket to unleash them all at the same time. Many of them are picking stores strategically, as some double the coupon value.

These maneuvers can lead to dramatic savings if buyers purchase exorbitant amounts of the same product. The people featured on the show often end up with entire shelves full of toilet paper, deodorant, potato chips, peanut butter, or mustard. Many fall into the "hoarder" category and often have trouble finding space for new purchases. Realistically, it's questionable if someone really can ever use up fifty packs of deodorant, so it's probably not a good deal even if they can get it dirt cheap.

You might wonder why stores participate in this game. That's easy: They get reimbursed for the coupon amounts by the manufacturer of the sold product. Those companies have a vested interest in pushing their products to the consumer, one step ahead of the competition, and that's why they sweeten the deal by issuing coupons. Arguably, extreme couponers are hardly a lucrative target for the industry, but if you think about the monetary value of product placement during the show, they can easily make up for the lost price margin.

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