Guy,
My favorite storage/retarding container is a plastic storage bag (preferably the kind with the sliding locking tab) or an empty bread bag. They are low mass and therefore cool quickly. And they are cheap. I usually press the dough ball flat before putting into the bag, which allows the dough to cool a bit faster, but also takes little space in the refrigerator. I also like a metal container, like an empty cookie tin. Canadave is a big fan of the metal container.
Except for the pizza screens, the auction items you mentioned are all used to hold pizza dough balls at different stages of production. The Pizza Dough Pans and Proofing/Retarding Pans are quite similar. They are very similar to a cookie tin. They are round, usually metal, and come in different diameters and depths. They are usually stackable and typically run from a few dollars up to about $10. If you need only one, you will also have to get a cover. Of course, if you need more than one, you only need the one cover. The Polycarbonate Pizza Dough Boxes are plastic trays that professional pizza operators use to hold their dough balls, usually in large quantities. They also come in different sizes, are stackable (to prevent crusting) and sell for around $15 and up (depending on size). If you needed only one of these, you would need a cover also. Pizza screens come in different sizes, so unless you are looking for an oddball size, like a 26-inch screen or something else out of the ordinary, you can expect to pay only a few dollars and rarely more than $10.
I personally like the idea of the individual metal pizza dough pans. They should allow the dough to cool a bit faster than some of the other containers (you can also pre-refrigerate or pre-freeze them to cool the dough even faster), they are reasonably compact, and shouldn't take up much space in the refrigerator. The next time I have to buy a bunch of pizza items, I will most likely buy a few of these.
Peter
