“How much did those storage units cost him? It sounds like a gamble because the contents aren’t disclosed until you pay.”
In the article it states he pays about $500 for a unit.
“After buying a unit, typically for $500 or less, he’ll spend a few hours clearing it out before transporting, sorting, listing, and storing the contents at his mother’s home in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, until they sell. Haskell says he sometimes uses tools like Google Lens or ChatGPT, or cross-references eBay listings, to estimate the going rates for items he’s discovered.
Today, he estimates he spends 20 to 25 hours a week on his business. In the hundreds of hours he’s poured into his business, he’s gotten a feel for some of the things people tend to hold onto, but there are often still surprises, he says. Every owner and “every unit is different.”
Also from the article:
“His most lucrative bet came early on, when he says he spent $450 on a unit he learned had belonged to disgraced Manhattan art dealer Andrew Crispo. It contained a painting by Man Ray, a leading figure of the Dada and surrealist movements, as well as several sketches by modernist painter Walt Kuhn, which cumulatively sold for $36,000.”
That one unit gave him a third of his revenue. I wonder how frequently he’ll find one like that.