$10 Locker, $40 Canister, $97,434 on eBay: A New Jersey Teen’s Storage Unit Math

In early 2024, Michael Haskell paid $10 for an abandoned storage unit. Inside was a carbon dioxide canister, which he sold for $40.¹

Now 18, Haskell runs Mike’s Unique Treasures, a business that buys abandoned storage units around the New York tri-state area and resells what’s inside. According to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It, the business brought in about $135,000 in 2025 from eBay and auction sales, plus another $85,000 from January through mid-July 2026.¹ Those figures are self-reported revenue, not profit, and the $135,000 covers 2025 only.

His story matters less for the total than for how it started: small, cheap and built around school.

From Legos to lockers

Haskell started young. As a kid, he sold books on eBay for a few dollars. He also bought rarer Legos and held on to them until they went out of production, then resold them at a profit.¹ Plenty of children own Legos. Fewer treat them as inventory.

“I never knew what I was going to be doing,” Haskell told CNBC Make It. “I always thought I was going to be doing something on my own.”¹

The move to storage units came partly from college applications. Haskell felt self-conscious about not having a 4.0 GPA and wanted something that would set him apart. “How was I going to be different from the crowd?” he told CNBC Make It. A rerun of the TV show “Storage Wars” also helped point him in that direction.¹

School on weekdays, lockers on weekends

Haskell often juggled school with the business, heading to storage lockers on weekends.¹ The business of emptying out other people’s storage runs out of his mother’s garage and basement in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey.²

Most of the 2025 money came from eBay, which brought in $97,434. Another $37,500 came through an auction house.²

IBTimes UK, in a rewrite of the CNBC reporting, adds that the business earned about $82,000 before interest and taxes in 2025. It says eBay fees and posting costs were the largest expenses and that Haskell puts 20 to 25 hours a week into the work.³ IBTimes attributes those details to what Haskell told CNBC Make It.

What other would-be resellers can take from it

• Start smaller than you think you need to. Haskell’s first sales were books worth a few dollars, and his first storage unit cost $10.¹
• Patience can be a strategy. He held rarer Legos until they went out of production, then sold them at a profit.¹
• Revenue and profit are different numbers. According to IBTimes, eBay fees and posting costs were the biggest expenses against his sales.³
• A side business can fit around a full schedule. He kept up with school by doing much of the hunting on weekends.¹

What comes next

IBTimes reports that Haskell starts at Emory University in Atlanta in 2026. He is weighing whether to run storage facilities in cheaper rural areas or flip houses in Georgia.³