Estate Sales

I love Estate Sales. I mean real deal Estate Sales. Not the “I’ve got some junk in my back closet so I’ll pull it out & put it on my driveway & advertise as an estate sale” kind of estate sale. As a matter of fact it really aggravates me see an advertised Estate Sale, with all kinds of stuff listed & you map it out. You turn off the main road & follow all the Estate Sale signs just to get to the address & the sign now says Yard Sale & all they have is broken junk & dirty clothes in the front yard. Yeah, that’s happened to me a few times. Ticks me off. I’ve found that if they start on a Thursday & last through the weekend, they are usually a ‘real’ Estate sale where you go through the house. Not just the garage.

As far as the true Estate Sales, most of the time, the Estate is being sold off because of a death. Relatives select the items they would like to keep & then put the rest up for sale. To me, this brings on a note of sadness. Sometimes, I like to think that maybe the person whose items are being sold, bought a sail boat to live out the rest of their days in sunshine & warm breezes. Or, they bought a condo in a really cool retirement village so they could play shuffle board or yahtzee with likeminded individuals & have late afternoon cocktails w/close friends on the clubhouse patio, while waiting for dinner to be served.

I try not to be too judgmental by the neighborhoods these are held in. You get what you think you will in most cases. In better neighborhoods, the quality of items is usually better & most of the time the prices are priced higher, especially the furniture pieces. However, I have found some good stuff in, let’s say, a lesser quality neighborhood – things like aluminum canning supplies, mason jars, cast iron skillets, etc. It all depends on what you are looking for.

There are 3 ways to conduct a true Estate Sale & do it well. There’s a whole bunch of ways to get it done badly but I won’t comment on those.

1. Relatives/friends hold the sale, usually over a 2-3 day period. If it’s organized well, things are marked with the prices, or lists are put up near a box or closet noting the prices (i.e. magazines, .10, paperback books .25, hard cover .50, etc.). Someone is usually in a nearby room or moving around from room to room to answer questions.
2. Hire a professional company to come to the house & do all of the above. In my experience, these are a bit more organized. I think they make the extra effort to categorize items & the things that won’t sell, are not on display, the things that will sell are organized with like items, etc. Usually the tags are clearer & tags are typed versus written. You’ll most likely get taxed as well.
3. Hire a professional company to come to the house & remove all the content back to their warehouse for the sale.

I had the opportunity to experience all 3 styles the past few weeks. I thought the warehouse sale (my 1^st time going to one like that)  might have items marked at a higher price, because the particular one I visited is associated with high faluten(sp?) antique auctions. But, it wasn’t & I thought the prices were very reasonable.

Some other ones that I went to were family/friend run & were in nice neighborhoods. The items were cleaned up & organized. And, still others were not so well run & everything was dirty or dusty.

But one stood out amongst the rest. It was in a very nice neighborhood, albeit an older well respected one. It’s one with really solid, well built homes & well maintained ones at that. You could tell this particular person that lived there had class & good taste. Beautiful furniture, lots of crystal, good cookware, etc. Even the items in the closets reflected a real sense of style. Good quality clothes & coats, a couple with fur collars, Chinese bathrobes, beautiful hats & gloves all tastefully displayed & were indicative of a by-gone era. Even the albums were indicative of another time – Frank Sinatra, Glenn Miller, lots of Jazz, etc. They had lots of really cool bartending items. I can just picture them sitting around the veranda under the oak trees with the stereo playing a cool Jazz number & ice clinking in the glasses.

Here’s a couple pictures of my haul. Not pictured are some Lodge cast iron pieces for a good price. That particular sale was for a couple in their 50’s that had bought a motor home to spend the next few years & were selling the majority of their household. Also missing are the 3 dozen mason jars I got for $2.00! Dirty but cleaned up nicely in the dishwasher.....

So, I’m going to continue frequenting these sales if they are not too far of a drive, with hopes of finding that slightly used Excalibur Dehydrator, a set of stainless steel cookware or a brand new Berkeley Water Filter, or whatever else interests me.