My Grandmother died and all her stuff was auctioned off before the family could get written documentation of will.

I'll try to keep this brief, I'm mostly looking for advice on behalf of my mom cause I can see she is truly distraught. In November shortly before thanksgiving my grandmother passed away, it was an aggressive cancer and she maybe lasted three week from the diagnosis. She was sick before we found out as well. Either way a majority of her personal belongings were in a storage unit for some time and she lived in a house that couldn't hold most of it. After she passed I went to the storage unit hoping to retrieve some of her belongings (namely photo albums she held for years) I also paid her bill for it since it was back up a bit, around 600$. I went with the death certificate but they said I wasn't allowed to open it. Annoying I thought since they waited till after I paid to tell me so. I was told we needed a written legal will announcing her belongings would go to next of kin or they wouldn't open it. I told them my grandmother died fairly quickly and she wasn't even literate so how would she have gotten a will. They said either way that's what we need. So my mom went to a courthouse for our county to get something like an estate letter?(I'm not sure if that is the correct term). But essentially it was to be signed by my uncles and aunts stating that there was nothing in storage that belongs to them and it can be put in my mother's name. They signed sometime in February. We got notice in mail today that it was signed, but when my mom called the storage facility they said they have new owners and because they didn't know the situation auctioned off everything in the unit. She asked if it were possible to know who bought specific things nothing like monetary value (like TVs that were in there) but stuff like the photo albums but they said no. I'm basically shooting a hail mary here in that is there any legal way of finding that stuff? My mom said she would even pay the people who bought it more than what they paid for the albums but the owners of the unit refused. She's mostly bummed because of the emotional connection to my grandmother those albums had. My grandma had them for years and its just tough knowing they are out there somewhere.

Written By: CheekyRapscallion
Source: http://bit.ly/2IlI1Tc