Darrell Sheets

Dubbed "The Gambler" on the surprise hit reality series, "Storage Wars" (A&E, 2010- ), auction buyer Darrell Sheets became an overnight celebrity for a job that he had been doing for over 35 years. Debuting in December 2010, "Storage Wars" was an immediate hit and quickly became the most watched series on A&E, thanks to the quirky personalities of the four buyers - Dave "The Mogul" Hester, a professional buyer who rankled his competitors and delighted in driving up auction prices; Barry "The Collector" Weiss, an independently wealthy antiques collector who more often than not lost money on his finds; and Jarrod "The Young Gun" Schulz, a struggling, but cocksure new buyer who bickered with his more sensible significant other, Brandi Passante. Sheets typically appeared with his son, Brandon, and sold his items at swap meets rather than dealing with the overhead of owning a store like Hester and Schulz. Both boisterous and good-natured, he had a genuine animosity for top dog Hester and clashed with his rival on more than one occasion. Sheets was known for unearthing some of the more interesting finds in his long career, finding everything from drawings by Picasso and a letter written by Abraham Lincoln to the corpse of a woman whose body was left in a locker by her husband. As with his fellow buyers, Sheets developed a loyal following, and much like Hester, developed his own catchphrase, "This is the WOW factor," which he used whenever finding something unusual and potentially of great value.

By Shawn Dwyer