Originally Posted by lazycash

I've been to 30+ Dan Dotson storage auctions in So Cal with about 10 of them being during Storage Wars filming. Dan Dotson has been a very reputable auctioneer for many years and does not stage storage units. Having seen 1000's of storage units, the ones I've seen during filmed auctions are no different. When filming is going on, the auctions tend to get very overbid. This is why you'll notice that much of the time someone will lose money on their unit on the show(Barry loses on about 80% of his) They only show auctioned units won by member's of the cast, yet there are many units won by members of the public that you never see.

With the exception of Jarrod and Brandy, I saw all of the other cast members at various auctions years ago before Storage Wars ever began. The popularity of the show has basically been a curse to those attending So Cal auctions as participation is now ten fold and winning bids have tripled from what they used to be, thus I hardly go to any nowadays. Anyone can show up to one of the auctions during the Storage Wars filming. Here is Dan Dotson's schedule, but only a few of those will actually be during filming. http://www.americanauctioneers.com/events.php

Here is the part of the show that is staged. As the show became more popular, often during filming members of the public would try and get on TV by doing lots of antics behind the Storage Wars bidders or things like bidding just to mock the cast. I've been to quite a few of them where members of the public would bid just to mock Dave by yelling "yuuuuuuup" obnoxiously to get their 15 seconds of fame. It became a nuisance, so now after the auctions are over, they re film just the bidding part with just the Storage Wars cast doing the bidding along with a few members of the public standing around.

So is it 100% real, no, but its not a bunch of actors staging an event as some of you have claimed. The TruTV auction show is definitely all fake like everything else on that channel.