“Storage Wars” is undoubtedly one of the most successful reality-TV series premiered by A&E in the 2010s. Known for the competitive streak of the bidders, and featuring lots of interesting findings inside the storage rooms, some very valuable, there was no chance of becoming tired of the show and its endless drama and amusing moments.
Although “Storage Wars” took a prolonged break from TV screens starting in 2019 – much to its fans’ chagrin – it returned to air with some known faces, but also with notable absentees impossible to ignore, but is fan favorite Casey Nezhoda one of those missing cast members?
Stay here to know all about Casey’s whereabouts, the current state of her family business, and whether or not she returned to “Storage Wars” or has taken a different path in life.
What Is She Doing Now?
Fan favorites Casey Nezhoda and her husband Rene have been in “Storage Wars” for several seasons, and that doesn’t seem to be changing any time soon. Despite taking a prolonged hiatus from TV, the show didn’t forget about the Nezhodas when it eventually made its comeback in 2021, since becoming regulars in the show.
That being said, Casey is doing what she does best, which is searching for the most incredible items in California’s abandoned storage lockers. Although in recent years her and Rene’s company Bargain Hunters Thrift Store closed down their shop’s physical location, the couple keeps their business afloat by successfully promoting their items on YouTube, which has hundreds of thousands of followers.
While Casey doesn’t reveal lots of details about her personal life, some sneak peeks into her Instagram account let us see that she splits her time between taking care of the business, raising daughter Tatianna, and working out. On top of that, her marriage with Rene is apparently going as well as ever these days.
What Happened To Her Business?
For over a decade, Casey and Rene Nezhoda’s business Bargain Hunters Thrift Store was located in Poway Road, San Diego, until its closing in April 2021. Although the business was apparently doing well, the Nezhodas closed down their only shop as their lease ended.
As reported by the San Diego Union Tribune, the Nezhodas weren’t the only thrift store in the area affected in recent years. Starting from 2020, several stores closed as well, as their leases weren’t renewed due to the potential sale of the adjacent properties, to become a residential area.
Once closed, a new physical shop wasn’t opened due to the apparent unaffordable lease costs in the area: ‘I would probably have to move to the business park, and (for retail) that would be suicide’, as Rene told the journal.
#TGIF #StorageWars #BargainHuntersThrift check out this new thing we we are doing on our Facebook Fan Club page lots of reels going out all day! https://t.co/pP4mBlrjYH pic.twitter.com/iE93knTw3H
— Casey Nezhoda on A&E (@Cbargainhunters) December 3, 2021
The Nezhodas then bought a 400 sqft warehouse in San Diego, from where they now manage their online selling business through platforms such as eBay and Whatnot, as they noted on a YouTube video on their channel. All in all, the Nezhodas have found new and inovative ways to keep their business afloat amidst the difficulties.
Social Media & Channel
Ever since closing their physical shop, Casey and Rene Nezhoda have kept their business alive by promoting their activities through social media and their highly popular YouTube channel Bargain Hunters Thrift. On the latter, the Nezhodas have attracted more than 180,000 subscribers and 17 million views combined, by often sharing videos of their activities, the products available for sale, some sneak peeks about their everyday life, and even educational content for collectors and business people alike.
As seen on their popular Facebook page, the Nezhodas’ Bargain Hunters Thrift Store has become a completely online business by offering their collectible products through bids on the websites Whatnot and eBay, the latter which is apparently their favorite. As Rene admitted on a YouTube video, the acquisition of their new and bigger warehouse in early 2021 was meant to expand their eBay operations, which so far has gone incredibly well, as the pair has sold over 11,000 articles on the platform, and gained almost 8,000 followers.
Did They Find Kobe Bryant’s Items?
Besides gaining fame for their skills at business and their “Storage Wars” appearances, the Nezhodas have also made headlines due to some amazing storage discoveries they’ve made in recent years. The most commented of all is related to the late basketball legend Kobe Bryant, of whom they found several items in a storage unit which formerly belonged to stylist Derek Roche.
The unit was initially auctioned for $375, then the Nezhodas bought the items from the winner for around $13,000 in early 2020. The unit contained dozens of shoes, t-shirts and accessories, some of which were brand new while others were presumed worn by Bryant himself. Some remarkable pieces price-wise in the collection include fur coats, official Lakers warm-up and game shirts, while the most personal items include Kobe’s daughters’ shirts and shoes.
Aware of the emotional value that the latter items held, the Nezhodas didn’t want to sell them, and instead planned on contacting Kobe’s widow Vanessa, to donate them to her.
However, in the end it was Vanessa who contacted the Nezhodas with a surprising proposal: ‘Everything has been worked out. A number of personal items, worn items, and paperwork were sold directly back to the Bryant family’, as Rene subsequently told TMZ.
Other Important Findings
So many years into the antiquity and bidding business, it’s really no wonder that Casey and Rene Nezhoda have a sixth sense at finding amazing items in storage units. The most recent of those happened in 2022, when the Nezhodas bought dozens of pieces of memorabilia of late Olympic track gold medalist Florence Griffith Joyner, known as Flo-Jo.
Initially the unit was won by George, an antiquity seller and good friend of the Nezhodas, who had the items stored for eight years before deciding to call Casey and Rene for a deal. While it’s unknown how much exactly the Nezhodas paid for Flo-Jo’s items, Rene admitted on a YouTube video that it was ‘thousands of dollars’.
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=644497239989823
Some amazing items bought by the Nezhodas include the very same shoes worn by Flo-Jo when she broke her athletic record in the 1988 Olympics, besides several other collectible articles such as Flo-Jo’s Barbie doll edition signed by her. They ultimately sold the collection to Flo-Jo’s widower, Olympic triple jump gold medalist Al Joyner, whose favorite item out of the lot was a weight band he and Flo created together back in the good old days.
The ultimate sale price of the collection wasn’t revealed by Rene, but as he affirmed on a video, several people close to Flo-Jo including family and friends had reached out to him before he finally chose Al for the deal.
Was Their Store Robbed?
Casey and Rene Nezhoda went through some difficult times when their physical store was still in business. In May 2019, the Bargain Hunters Thrift Store was broken into by burglars who smashed the front doors and stole around $2,000 in articles from the shop, including some rare coins previously collected by Casey and Rene, the latter describing the criminals as ‘the lowest form of people’. An extra $2,000 in property damages was added to the losses.
Only two years later, the store was burglarized once again when the Nezhodas were taking a day off. This second time the amount stolen was bigger, as around $8,000 in valuable collectible cards was stolen, added to $1,500 in physical damages to the shop. In both cases, it’s unclear if the thieves were ever caught.
What Is Casey’s Net Worth?
Seeing how successful and popular Casey is, it’s no wonder that her financial situation is a subject of interest to her fans, so, Casey has an estimated net worth of $1.5 million, shared with her husband Rene, as of early 2023.
This modest fortune comes mostly from their decades-long career as antique dealers and owners of Bargain Hunters Thrift Store, on top of their earnings from “Storage Wars”, though their TV salary is unfortunately unknown. As well, the couple has made good money out of their gambling escapades, their most recent victory taking place in October 2022, when Rene won $70,455 during the Enjoy Poker Tour celebrated in Uruguay.
Regarding the reason for their success, Casey affirms that it all comes down to their hard-working ethic and experience, which sets them apart from some other antiquity businesses: ‘Other people got in the business after 2008 because they needed a job, but didn’t really know what they were doing. We have been doing this our whole lives’, she told TV Shows Ace in 2020.
All in all, the Nezhodas are already doing well financially, but will most likely keep growing their fortune in the next couple of years.
What Happened To “Storage Wars”?
Everyone who has been watching “Storage Wars” series’ remembers how starting from 2019, the show took a prolonged hiatus from TV in an unexpected way.
While an official statement regarding the show’s situation wasn’t released back then, in a 2020 interview with TV Shows Ace, Casey and Rene Nezhoda affirmed that A&E had ‘moved on’ from “Storage Wars”, but that they weren’t closed off from rejoining the show if the opportunity arose. The Nezhodas also disclosed other chances of appearing on TV in a ‘remote COVID type of show’, but unfortunately ‘it didn’t make sense’ for them to accept.
Holding off from appearing in other TV shows eventually paid off, as in 2021, “Storage Wars” announced its long-awaited comeback on air with the Nezhodas, along with several other fan favorites of buyers and auctioneers.
Who Left The Show?
While we’re happy to know Casey and Rene Nezhoda are still in “Storage Wars”, some other cast members didn’t have the same luck of returning to the show, or were left out of it long before its hiatus. Here are all of them:
Dave Hester
As one of the most scandal-prone cast members of “Storage Wars”, Dave Hester is a face hardly forgettable for fans of the show. Dave was a regular “Storage Wars” buyer before he was fired from it in the third season, to which he responded by filing a $750,000 lawsuit against the show and A&E for wrongful termination. The most shocking part of the lawsuit was Dave accusing the show of faking ‘nearly every aspect’ of it, claiming producers staged the storage units’ contents, by placing articles in it to make it more appealing to audiences.
Regardless of the scandal caused by Dave’s claims, the case was eventually settled for an undisclosed amount, and despite his revelations, he returned to the show in its fifth season until the 13th, when “Storage Wars” returned from hiatus, and he was nowhere to be seen -not much has been said about the reasons leading to his second exit from the show.
Jarrod Schulz
Despite being in “Storage Wars” for the longest time, in recent years things haven’t been going so well for Jarrod Schulz when it comes to his TV job.
As it happens, around 2019 Jarrod and Brandi Passante, who is also a “Storage Wars” regular, broke up after almost two decades together. There’s little information about the reason for their break up, but the former couple have taken separate professional paths and bid separately by the time “Storage Wars” returned for its 13th season in early 2021.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CdMvjbGhI8q/
Then the situation took an ugly turn in April that year, when an argument ensued between the two while they were separately hanging out at a bar in California. According to reports, Jarrod allegedly pushed Brandi but was gone by the time police arrived at the place. He was later arrested and charged with misdemeanor domestic violence, though according to TMZ, a separate investigation was led by A&E to identify the real nature of the incident.
Although the network didn’t officially address the situation, Jarrod wasn’t included in the 14th and following “Storage Wars” seasons, leaving us to think the incident led to his firing.
Barry Weiss
As an original cast member and undoubted fan favorite, many hearts were broken when Barry Weiss left “Storage Wars” back in the fourth season. His reasons for leaving were quite special though: ‘It was fun, but I’d had enough, and I kind of wanted to leave while it was still popular’, he admitted in an interview from 2017.
Some years after his exit from the show, a terrible bike accident suffered by Barry had him undergoing surgery several times, and a long recovery process. The “Storage Wars” so-called ‘Collector’ eventually made his long-awaited return to the show for its 14th season.
While many known faces are missing from the show nowadays, cast members such as Barry and the Nezhodas, are doing well, and keeping the show as alive as ever.
