Every half-obsessed collector can tell you their favorite estate sale: there’s always one. Estate sales aren’t the casual experience of a garage sale. An estate sale is a feeding frenzy, with the die-hard collectors fighting with antique dealers for the best items, often being allowed in only by lottery or in small groups. An estate sale isn’t something you drive by and stop in (unless it’s the second or third day) – it approaches the compexity of an auction in many ways. An estate sale is an ‘everything must go’ event, even beating that permanently-closing furniture store in your town. Rummage (or ‘garage’ or ‘yard’, depending on your location) sales are generally run by the owner of the property, with the intent of cleaning out the basement or earning a couple dollars. The scope and scale of an estate sale generally requires the skills of an expert, an estate liquidation company who knows the business.

This week I had the pleasure of helping No Egrets Antiques, a Milwaukee antique dealership (and, in the interest of disclosure, are my inlaws), set up an estate sale. I was not privy to the details of the property’s liquidation, but I and my wife were brought in on the first day, for both our antique knowledge and our muscles, to help set things up.

The sale itself is next Monday. At first, I thought that we were starting far too early in preparations. Once inside, however, it became clear that setting up an estate sale is a far more complex endeavor. When preparing an estate sale, it is likely that the home was left as-is, with food in the refrigerator and water in the dog’s bowl. It’s not like there’s a stack of boxes in the garage, ready to be laid out on tables: every nook and cranny of the home has to be searched for sellable items, and the rest has to be thrown away.

First of all are the people disposing of the property. On the first day we were let in by the son of the owner of the home and his wife, who were still claiming the property that they did not want sold at the sale. At first, this seemed like a nice gesture for us to work around them, but it began to pose a problem when a few specific items ‘disappeared.’ In managing an estate sale, we did not buy the property to resell; the property still belongs to the owner of the estate until the item is sold — so the owner still has the right to take anything they like. However, the rate for managing the sale was based on the value of the items expected to be sold at the sale. While the owners in this case were quite understanding and a solution was worked out, a written agreement setting the final date that items will be removed, or a detailed list of ‘owner-claimed’ items, would be wise in the future to avoid losing money on the sale, or confusion about what was and was not supposed to be sold.

Even after the owners are satisfied that they’ve gotten everything they want, sometimes there’s still questions. I’ve known of other estate-sale companies who, once the owners say, ‘that’s all’, toss anything personal in the trash. While the owners may think they’ve gotten all the photo albums and family movies out of the house, once every drawer is dumped out there is always more to be found. Rather than throw out things that might have sentimental value to the owners, we opted to designate a few boxes ‘personal effects,’ and put them aside for the owners to verify that they are unwanted.

The first day consisted of separating the sell-able from the junk. Garbage bag after garbage bag was filled with scraps, damaged items, old food and horrid polyester clothes — but antique tools, art prints, sewing materials, and nice furniture were kept. Nothing was priced, and the four of us worked all day, around 9 hours, simply sorting, opening drawers, digging through closets, and emptying boxes. We left feeling like we hadn’t made a dent.

Coming in Part 2: not enough tables, the junk man cometh, and the pricing of the items.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 5th, 2006 at 9:33 pm and is filed under collecting fyi. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.