Featured Image Credit: AandE
Topics: Film and TV, Money, Viral
Mia Williams
A buyer on Storage Wars managed to break records by making the most amount of money from a storage unit on the show... ever.
The show’s largest profit came from Darrell Sheets, a guy who featured quite a few times on the series.
He made an unheard of amount of money after dropping less than $4,000 on a storage unit that just happened to be filled with some very valuable artwork. Take a look:
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Speaking on the show after his purchase of $3,600, Sheets said: "It's time to look at my art locker. I'm hoping this one's a masterpiece.”
After his son Brandon unearthed a painting from the locker, a stunned Sheets said: “Oh my God, that's so beautiful.
“If this is a real Frank Gutierrez, this thing could be worth thousands. It's a heart at the top with a woman's arms holding two babies over blue birds in a nest."
And - you guessed it - the locker was indeed filled with original art by Frank Guttierez - a Mexican artist.
Kathy Gallegos of Avenue 50 Studio Inc, who valued the paintings, said Guttierez was a ‘very important artist of a piece of Chicano history’.
Despite some small areas of damage, they were still set to fetch a hefty price.
Gallegos valued the collection at a staggering $300,000 - the highest payout in Storage Wars history.
Gutierrez is a Mexican impressionist and modern painter, whose work often features dreamscapes and other fantastical elements.
After the show, Sheets did some digging and in a post on Twitter in December 2012, he revealed that he’d been in touch with Guttierez and had confirmed that the locker had once belonged to him.
Sheets was even kind enough to post back some personal items to the artist - although, I imagine he wanted to hold on to most of the expensive artwork.
In the post, Sheets said: “Best part is I got to speak to Frank G and I'm giving him back a lot of his personal items. He is a very wonderful man.”
The show works by people bidding on storage units, despite having no idea what may be inside them.
You could end up shelling out a load of cash on a unit full of junk, but you could also end up with a ton of rare and expensive art, so you really could say it’s a gamble.
It seems like a crazy concept, but when you can win as big as Sheets did, it isn’t half tempting!