I saw a bit of one programme where they opened the box and found a $5000 guitar and in another an old bike worth hundreds. The stuff's planted there to spice up the shows.
Have to agree with sandyRoe, every locker they win always has something worth thousands of dollars in it.
The one boxtops mentioned...Salvage Hunters, is the one where he travels all over the country and buys items to sell in his showroom, I think his name's Drew Pritchard, great show
They show new episodes on Dave every Tuesday night, but agree the rest of the scheduling is haphazard. Though that seems to be the way with most of the American shows we get.
They did one recently at a shipping yard with 40ft containers. They said the insurance values are published in local papers before hand so they knew one container had a value of £100k. It came down to the last 2 containers of the day. One couple bid something like $20k on one and another set of people paid over $40 for the other. When they opened them up of course the ones who paid the most found all it had inside was boxes of rubber wrist bands while the other had a mega expensive car in it. Then a physical fight broke out. It was immense!
I do agree though that sometimes what's inside the lock ups is deliberately covered up by the show to make it more interesting. I think the bidders genuinely have no idea though.
Oh and as for duffs, one last week had what what looked like a bunch of Fender boxes which would have been worth thousands. The guy paid a decent sum for the lock up to find it was actually just a fridge, made to look like the real thing and was only worth a couple of hundred. It does happen quite a bit.