What is Darrell Sheets' Net Worth and Salary?
Darrell Sheets is an American storage hunter and reality television star who has a net worth of $4 million. Born May 13, 1958, in California, Darrell Sheets is best known for being one of the original cast members of the smash hit A&E reality series "Storage Wars". Because of his strong personality and cutthroat attitude when it comes to bidding on storage lockers, Darrell was one of the most popular characters on the show. Known as "The Gambler," his biggest payday since appearing on the show occurred in 2012 when he spent $3,600 on a locker that ended up containing a $300,000 Frank Guttierez art collection. It is the largest find in the show's history as well. Besides starring on "Storage Wars," Sheets has also appeared on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" (2011) and "Rachael Ray" (2013).
Storage Wars
Prior to joining "Storage Wars," Sheets had a 30+ year career finding treasure in in storage lockers. He has stated in an interview that some of his biggest finds were four Pablo Picasso drawings, a letter written by Abraham Lincoln (which sold for more than $15,000), and a huge collection of rare comic books that were valued at $90,000.
"Storage Wars" debuted in December 2010 and was instantly one of the most popular programs on cable television. Each episode of the first season drew an average of 2.5 million viewers, and every episode of the second season drew an average of 5 million viewers.
Darrell is known for his catchphrase "This is the WOW factor!," and he appeared in 168 episodes of the series. Sheets revealed that in 1988, he found a human corpse wrapped in plastic in a San Diego storage locker. The police later determined that the locker's former owner had killed his wife and hidden her body in the storage unit. Darrell left "Storage Wars" in 2017, and in 2019, he retired from the storage locker business and moved to Lake Havasu City, Arizona.
Storage Wars Salary
Thanks to a 2012 lawsuit filed by Darrell's one-time "Storage Wars" co-star Dave Hester, we learned a lot of interesting details about the cast salaries and other controversial allegations.
The most salacious allegation in Hester's lawsuit directly involved Brandi Passante. Hester alleged that the Storage Wars' producers paid for Brandi to get a breast enhancement to… enhance… the show's sex appeal.
Furthermore, he alleged that 100% of the treasures found in the storage units were in-authentically "placed" or "salted" by the producers and that after the scenes are shot, the cast members were actually forced to give the items back to the producers rather than re-sell them as was often portrayed or implied.
Finally, Hester laid out the salary he and other cast members were set to receive. The typical Storage Wars single season compensation was broken down as:
- $25,000 per episode with a guaranteed of 26 episodes, which works out to a minimum salary of $650 thousand per season
- $2,500 per month for travel expenses
- $124,500 expense account
- $25,000 signing bonus
In total, Hester reported that the average cast member earned a bit over $800,000 for a season.
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Personal Life
In 2012, Darrell proposed to girlfriend Kimber Wuerfel and moved to Huntington Beach from San Diego to be near her. They later split up, and in 2016, Sheets became engaged to Romney Snyder, who was the founder and CEO of HiCaliber Horse Rescue until the organization was shut down due to accusations of fraud and animal cruelty.
Sheets and Snyder never made it to the altar, and after Darrell retired, he began a relationship with Patty Rich, who owns several vineyards and restaurants. Sheets and Rich met after he showed interest in a boat she was selling. Darrell has a son Brandon, (born December 26, 1983), who co-starred with his father on "Storage Wars."
Darrell lost 100 pounds with the help of Nutrisystem in 2016, and in March 2019, after three months of feeling unwell, he had a mild heart attack while attending a Justin Timberlake concert. He revealed that he had been diagnosed with "congestive heart failure and a severe issue going on with [his] lung" and he later underwent surgery.
