by Joshua Palmer

Timothy Pender has felt the down economy’s pinch. The Indianapolis flooring subcontractor says when work dried up last fall, so did his income. “I’m going to take care of my kids first, then eat,” Pender says.

He stopped paying rent on his Glen Arm Road storage unit and then in March, the company told him his stuff would be sold. “It was like a slap in the face,” Pender says.

He settled his $400 bill just hours before his 62-inch TV, furniture and children’s clothes hit the auction block. Auctioneers say self-Auctioneers say self-storage sales are increasingly common.

Chris Crepeau of Michigan-based Blair Auction and Appraisal says business is up 50 to 75 percent this year. He travels to Indianapolis once a month to conduct storage unit auctions. "I hope we're at a peak and it decreases soon," he says. "It's not fun."

While heartbreaking for delinquent renters, the auctions can be a bargain hunter's gold mine. Recently at U-Store-It Post Road's auction, more than 30 people showed up looking for a deal. As Crepeau rolled up the door, the crowd pressed forward, politely peering, craning their necks and searching dark corners with flashlights.

By law, bidders cannot enter the unit or touch anything. Until bidding ends, the goods still belong to the tenant. Literally, what they see is what they get.

"At a normal auction you know exactly what you're getting," says Chris Gregory of Richmond. "But this is like a mystery box."

Crepeau led deal-seekers to about 10 U-Store-It locations across the city that day, auctioning a grab bag of goods: oversized chrome rims, boxes of toys, a junked Fiat, crutches, basketballs, toolboxes, various furnishings and an endless variety of bulging garbage bags containing who knows what.

Winning bids ranged from $35 to more than $1,000. Frank Cutter, regional manager for Herman & Kittle Properties, which operates Indianapolis-area facilities such as Avon Self-Storage, says unemployment has been a key factor in the increase in delinquent tenants.

But he says the sales are a last resort. "We don't want to sell anybody's stuff," Cutter says. "We try to work with customers."

One person's loss is another's gain.

Full-time reseller Mark Frederick of Winchester, Ohio, paid $1,000 for a U-Store-It unit with a washer and dryer, office chairs and commercial-grade snowplow.

"The last time I got one of those, I sold it on eBay for $1,800," Frederick says. With a $100 bid, he also won a unit with a muddy chrome bumper, metal bed frame and half-filled garbage bags.

"It's a gamble," he says. "You have to take a chance."