Fixed storage units are strange rooms away from home: protected by the law and a large metal fence, allowing you to store as many Beanie Babies as your heart can keep tabs on, along with assorted gym equipment (the kind that looks easier to use on television). Because of the reclusiveness, unopened storage units have an air of mystery and potentiality. This feeling is so common, A&E made a terrible show about it. At the same time, the storage habits of the rich and famous are shrouded in this additional environment of mystery. Years later when someone cracks the units open, some incredible things finally see the light guided by the metal roll up door. Today, I count down several interesting items found inside abandoned storage units. What’s inside may amuse you or inspire you to attend an auction.
- The Lotus Submarine Car, The Spy Who Loved Me
A humble contractor from Long Island thought it would be interesting to shell out some cash for a storage container without knowing the items that rested inside. I’m sure the excitement was like opening a pack of trading cards (or opening Christmas presents, but that seems cliché). You can imagine the man’s disappointment when his brother opened the unit and uttered one word: “junk.” Beneath the sheet was an odd contraption that resembled the faded body of a car with an odd, impractical design.
The contractor figured it would at least make up for the $100 he spent on the container, so he loaded it up on his truck and went off. A man stopped the contractor on the road and told him that the thing he was toting around was the submarine car from the James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me. This had never occurred to the contractor because he had never seen a bond film. A few years later, an anonymous buyer purchased it for $860,000. That anonymous buyer? Elon Musk of Tesla. We must assume it’s a prototype design for some real submarine car.
- Never-released Michael Jackson tunes
In a storage unit owned by Joe Jackson rested a collection of more than 250 unreleased Michael Jackson songs, all recorded at a time when he wasn’t under a recording contract. A struggle ensued over whether the tunes should be made public or laid to rest, as what seems to have been the intention of Joe Jackson when he locked the recordings away. Some of the tracks were recorded with Tina Turner and, while this may be exciting to some fans, don’t expect the music to ever enter the light of day (in a second, more abstract way) as the parties involved seem to be caught in an awkward legal struggle.
- Nicholas Cage’s super rare super comic
In 2000, police arrived at the home of Nicholas Cage to find the actor hysterical about a piece of property that he had stolen from him over night. Lining the walls of the room were bullet-proof cases that house various rare comics. The one stolen? A comic book featuring Super Man’s first ever appearance. The comic, on a scale of 1-10 that indicates its condition, was a solid 9. To put that into perspective, a number 8 a few years ago, netted around $1 million. But this went beyond money, as Cage had close ties with the character after almost being cast as the bullet-proof man in blue himself in the aborted 90s film, Superman Lives. Years later, the comic was found in a storage unit with absolutely no one knowing how or why it was there.
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