Storage Wars Cast, Is It Real or Fake and Staged?

Quick Facts

They always say never judge a book by its cover but Thom Beers and his co-executive producers have led several individuals into not just judging books (storage boxes) by their covers but buying them and all the ‘risks’ attached.

Okay, let’s be plain about this. Storage units are rented out to individuals and business owners usually on a monthly basis, right? So these storage facility managers also own the right to place a unit on auction if debts are incurred by the tenant. Interestingly, the public is invited for such sales but no one is allowed to touch or move any item in a unit, they can only look in from a distant.

In California, the period of time set for an auction to be scheduled is three months. Original Productions in collaboration with FremantleMedia and A&E Network seized on the frenzy of such sales and began a television series sometime in 2010 – Storage Wars.

Storage Wars Cast

The show boasts of several interesting cast and crew members including a husband and wife professional auctioneers, Dan and Laura Dotson, who are based in California. It has been said that the duo was the inspiration behind the birth of Storage Wars. Of course, it takes more than two persons to make a show. So there’s also the hot and beautiful Texan, Brandi Passante, thought to be in some sort of relationship with chronic ‘lawbreaker’ Jarrod Schulz.

In the fifth season, Ivy Calvin stepped into the show and has been dubbed the cheapest (or one of the cheapest) with about $850,000 to his name in contrast with Barry Weiss’s (not the music producer) estimate of $10 million. Well, it’s necessary to say that Barry’s fortune is mostly a result of Northern Produce, a jointly owned company with his brother.

The American reality television series boast of quite a large range of participants as its cast, from buyers to auctioneers featuring as guest and recurring cast members. Beyond the guys already named, the main cast of the show includes; Kenny Crossley, Shana Dahan, Edwina Registre, Justin Bryant, Emily Wears, Dave Hester, Darrell Sheets, Rene Nezhoda, and Mary Padian.

It will be a big omission if Casey Lloyd Nezhoda, a woman who is a perfect definition of the word sexy isn’t mentioned. Regardless, the Dotsons remain a strong factor in this drama.

Okay, we can hear your bells chiming already! Drama, you say? Anyway, you are not alone on this one as there is a school of thought swearing by all things holy that Storage Wars, like many other television series and shows (like The Curse of Oak Island), is guided by a script; that there is a scriptwriter or writers somewhere who are not getting due credit but are being duly ‘credited’. Or rather, that the show is basically Faked! So let’s talk about that…

Is It Real or Fake and Staged?

Imagine discovering a piggy bank hidden away by your grandmother over a decade ago and finding recent dollar bills stacked in them. That sounds just about wrong and would require answers to a lot of questions; especially if you had been told that no one had as much as touched it over the years. Confusing? Well, this happened on an actual episode when a 10-year-old storage unit was found containing a 4-month-old dollar bill.

Ever wondered how a lot of the boxes have at least one valuable item? Your guess is simply as good as ours. We may be clueless about this but certain quarters believe that the secret ingredient to this delicious part of the show is salt. Please don’t get all confused on us, will you? The salt is basically added in a process called salting where one or two items of value are thrown into the mix of a unit in order to spice up the find and make it less regular and uninteresting.

Leave out all the law you might think you know: it’s illegal to sort through a box before an auction, and all that. No one is going to be so daft as to tamper so openly with the law, don’t you think so?

The auction actually does take place (sometimes, it’s real) before the cameras are cut, the deed done and the tapes set to roll again. Wait a few minutes and the “oohs” and “ahs” begin, a diamond or a pearl has been found. But to be fair, some boxes do contain absolute junk while others have truly good pieces as many have argued but will you knowingly lock away a gem and then allow it to go up for auction?

If you are a regular at any sort of auction events, then it should be common knowledge to you that they aren’t exactly always boisterous. Some auctions go so boring that certain items get just a bid or two. Yet, never or almost never on Storage Wars do we get this. The auctions on this show are always interesting. How so? We wouldn’t be surprised to know that most auctions take place after the actual auctions in order to get in all the cool and funny bits. We haven’t been in any (yet) so we can’t quite say but they must have some kind of psychic powers to tell the good stuff from a look.

Claims have also arisen that entire storage units have been faked at some points. We’re talking getting an empty unit, filling it with all what not and bringing them on the show as an actual real-life storage box.

Oh sorry, the show never claimed to be real, did they? We just merely assumed or thought it was. This is so similar to how we believed Santa Claus to be a real ageless man with white beards so jobless and cheerful that he went around giving out free gifts to little kids and moving down dirty sooty chimneys to do just that. Or how we lost a tooth and placed them under our pillows for the tooth fairy to drop a penny in exchange. Of course, we were all victims till we became ‘wise’. The same goes for this A&E show.

Once upon a time, one of the dearly beloved stars of the show, the most beloved if we may say, filed a lawsuit against Discovery Channel on grounds of being fake and staged. Dave Hester popularly known as The Mogul cited the 1934 Communications Act bearing in mind that the show was a game. In defense, A&E stated unequivocally that it was never stated that Storage Wars was a game, the reason being that if it was, then the participants have to be exhibiting some sort of skill and/or intelligence and not merely relying on dumb luck.

As insulting as this response was, it solved the case and answered the question we’ve all been asking about the show being real or fake. One would think that stylishly calling the stars numbskulls will make them have a rethink on the show, this didn’t happen. Don’t ask why – money is addictive. With some casts having a rumored net worth of as much as $5 million and the show being a major source of the wealth, it’d be foolish to walk away from such a lucrative endeavor. We guess you know already that this is in reference to Darrell Sheets so let’s move on. Before we do, we just have to mention Brandon Sheets, Darrell’s highly controversial and ‘crybaby’ son who is now no longer a cast, not unexpectedly though, with all his tweets flying around.

With so much fortune seemingly lying around in the pockets of the stars, it has also been said that several items of value that have been ‘found’ in the units actually came from them. Confused? Don’t be. Some persons just happen to say that some of the prized collections the casts discovered were bought or brought in by the finder beforehand and placed on the units by the crew.

You must know that a vital element of the show is the evaluators. These are the persons responsible for taking ‘professional’ looks at the found items and stating their monetary value. For these guys, there are yet more rumors, rumors that they are mostly unqualified and unworthy of being judges of value. Yeah, most times these evaluators own a shop or store and have an idea of what’s at hand but they are hardly ever experts on the matter.

The lowest blow which we must state is unproven and a ‘supposed’ truth is one too low to ignore. A source with a name similar to grudge has said that A&E ‘supposedly’ forced one of its cast to have plastic surgery. So this particular person as the rumor goes is female and was deemed ‘unworthy’ for television. Her name wasn’t mentioned, it was simply said that she was practically coerced and paid to go under the knife and acquire better assets worthy of being shown and strutted around on TV.

While this is totally a rumor and should be taken with just a pinch of salt, we’re of the strong opinion that altering any body part should completely be a thing of choice and honestly hope that this proves to be just an unfounded worry. If the contrary, however, proves to be true, then Storage Wars is truly and without contest, the fakest of all fakes for a ‘reality television show’.

All juicy gossip aside, it is very important to state again that all the points stated above are genuinely without solid evidence. But who can really say? After all, it has been proven times without count that to every rumor there’s an iota of truth and what’s a rumor if it isn’t spread? Consider this our quota to fuelling the rumor about Storage Wars being fake and staged. Albeit, be the judge – based on the things we’ve discussed above, what do you think about the show?

We are tempted to add that perhaps you shouldn’t be quick to judge if the show has offered a bit of entertainment to you at one point or the other. It’s highly doubtful that you would have been entertained if it was strictly all real and boring.

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