Michael Haskell's office is decorated with oil paintings and Chinese vases, but "they're Qing, not Ming. Ming vases are the ones you want," the 17-year-old tells Alex Vadukul. The New Jersey senior knows that fact because of his "enterprising hobby," as Vadukul puts it in a piece for the New York Times: buying abandoned storage units in the New York City area for a song and selling whatever valuables are inside for a profit on eBay. He pulls in more than $7,000 a month, but he had one even bigger win: a Brooklyn unit he bought for $450 that had belonged to 1980s art dealer Andrew Crispo.
It contained works by Man Ray and Walt Kuhn that later sold for almost $50,000 via the auction house Bonhams. Haskell bought into the S&P 500 with his profits and has built a mini-warehouse of cataloged collectibles in his mom's garage. He leans on technology to assist: He photographs items and uses the Google Lens AI image search to get their ballpark value. A ChatGPT-based program he developed cross-checks the names of the owners of abandoned units with new articles to surface lockers that may have had famous owners who may have stored potentially worthwhile memorabilia.
But as Vadukul relays, it's not just a cold numbers and tech game for Haskell, who has found heart-tugging human stories amid the boxes and furniture: a socialite's life in freefall, a pioneering Black mayor's family history, a soul musician's unfulfilled career, and a Purple Heart Haskell refuses to sell while he tries to trace its owner. Read the fascinating full story here.
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