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Thread: Clearing Out Parent's Home

  1. #81
    Senior Member Teacher Terry's Avatar
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    Il, you are so right that they priced everything way too high.

  2. #82
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    Quote Originally Posted by Teacher Terry View Post
    Il, you are so right that they priced everything way too high.
    I have noticed this at estate sales lately, too. Pieces of furniture are priced at antique store prices, which will not work. People go to these sales for bargain, and will not buy even at the 50% on Sunday price offered.

    I would price furniture at about 1/3 of what these folks are charging. To start, and be prepared to take less.

  3. #83
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    Quote Originally Posted by Tybee View Post
    I have noticed this at estate sales lately, too. Pieces of furniture are priced at antique store prices, which will not work. People go to these sales for bargain, and will not buy even at the 50% on Sunday price offered.

    I would price furniture at about 1/3 of what these folks are charging. To start, and be prepared to take less.
    This is good to know. We have a fair number of antiques in the house as my mom was a collector for a number of years plus old furniture from grandparents. Hopefully the estate sale folks my sister got in contact with will price things to sell and not go for the "antique" prices. If we are stuck with them because they don't sell, sis will never just donate them, because they are antiques, belonged to Grandma, etc.

  4. #84
    Senior Member iris lilies's Avatar
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    I am, this moment, putting up items on Nextdoor and Craigslist to sell for our Park Conservancy in a presale event. No bites so far.

    the estate sale company priced our friend’s dining room set (pressed oak, table and six chairs) at $480 which went to half price on Sunday.

    I am pricing it at $225 which is just a tad lower than Sunday’s price. We shall see if there are any bites.

    I work with people in the Conservancy who love old china (pretty much worthless) and they price it silly high, and then store it from year to year. Never do they price any of this stuff at a value I think it should go for. Actually, my goal for this stuff is “wholesale” price so that other dealers at the event come by our booth, buy our crap, and cart it down the street to their booth. But this makes my fellow sellers mad. “Do you see how much they are going to get for that item??!!!”

    Haha, let them get that price. If they dont, they have to cart the crap home.

    Our sale is two days. tWO DAYS, people! Only TWO DAYS to offload it all.

  5. #85
    Senior Member Teacher Terry's Avatar
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    I sold a ornate Eastlake double bed for 250 and it took 6 months. So IL you are what I call a realist

  6. #86
    Senior Member flowerseverywhere's Avatar
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    We recently held a quilters garage sale. We all bought stuff in to sell with the intention of using the money to buy batting and backing for charity quilts. Books went for approximately 10% of cover price. Fabric 15-20%. There were a few dozen kits that went for less than 20% of the original price. We had so many leftovers I took home about $1000 worth of quilt store quality fabric, books, unfinished projects and kits if they were new. We could not sell for even 10% of the original price,and people didn’t want them. I am busy making charity quilt tops.

  7. #87
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    Flowers, when we were buying and selling, hubby made the comment that most women do not want used (previously owned by someone else) things. I have found the same thing at craft/quilters/etc. sales. I personally don't care if new or used, I just want a fantastic price. Our guild charity group gets a huge amount of "stuff" that no one wants. Much of it is amazing.

    Collected so much that I now have to say No when someone asks me if I am looking or want their stuff.
    Last edited by sweetana3; 5-30-18 at 4:42pm.

  8. #88
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    We went to several estate sales this weekend, and here is what we bought, if that helps you to figure out what might sell at your parent's sale:

    DH bought several boxes of screws for a quarter and he was very pleased. Along same line, I bought some spools of thread for a dime each and some double point knitting needles for 50 cents.

    I bought a curtain panel for 2 dollars and went home and cut it in two and replaced the bathroom curtains for summer.

    I bought a Stickley type oak rocker (actually a Taylor rocker from Bedford Ohio, oldest continuous chair manufacturer in the country) for 10 dollars. It had been marked 60. It is in rough shape but will make a nice project.

    On half price day at one estate sale, bought an Oreck vacuum , with twenty dollars worth of bags and belts, for six dollars. A vintage sled, medium size, for 12 dollars, and a pair of Norwegian wooden cross country skis for ten dollars. They will probably be decorative but they do seem as though one could use them for cross country skiing, if one bought boots.

    I walked by many items that seemed overpriced to me. Other people were buying a lot at the estate sale, but were waiting until Saturday for 30% off, and we went back Sunday at 50% off.

    One sale had box lots that were not selling to anybody, so they changed the rules that you could put together your own box for five dollars. That is where I got the Stickley type rocker.

    People do buy clothes and shoes, which always surprises me, especially used shoes. So you might be able to sell a lot at your estate sale but I would really make everything a bargain, and do it in one day or at most two. You could do Friday full price and Saturday 8-1 half price. People will wait. They also took bids if you wanted something for a lower price and if it did not sell, they would call you. I have seen that lately at all the professionally run sales.

    If it is a big house with a lot of stuff, I would seriously hire it out, as they know what they are doing, and you will be spared all of it. I am thinking about this in terms of my parents' house, which we may go through this summer or fall. I would like to get everything out that has sentimental value to any of us, and determine what will come with one of us and what will be sold, and then hire someone to come in and do a massive sale, except it won;t be massive as my mom and dad were emphatically not hoarders (thank God) and most of what they have is books. There is some furniture from my grandparents that I would like to have. There really isn't the fifty years accumulation I see in many of these houses, and we have thrown out much in the way of worn out clothing and stained stuff. But there is probably a week's worth of the siblings going through and dividing up what they do not want sold.

    Our problem is my mom and dad are not ready to do this, so there it sits.

  9. #89
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    Bumping to respond to Tybee's post and say thanks for the heads up on estate sales. My sister had contacted one estate sale company a couple of months ago who advised not to throw anything out, you never know what will sell. She decided not to clear out the basement (thank goodness!) based on their advise as there are a lot of tools, boxes of screws, nails, stuff like that.

    However, she's decided to wait on the estate sale and selling the house, so since it's not a priority for her at this point, then I am no longer volunteering to go down and clear out stuff with her like I have before. We have spent nearly 2 years going at this, since before Dad died actually. I pushed to help clean because she was anxious to get it done and put the house up for sale this past spring, but now she's changed her mind. No real reason but she has a tendency to spin all over the map, one day she's focused on one thing, then switches gears with no warning. I suspect because everything else in the estate is taken care of and all is left is the house, it may be hitting her that this is it: this is the house she grew up in and last vestige of the life we had with them and soon it will belong to someone else.

  10. #90
    Senior Member Teacher Terry's Avatar
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    It is costing your sister money to hold onto the house. We always do it ourselves because professionals take a big cut of the profits and charge too much for the items so they don’t sell. I have done this 4x’s and with 2 people working all day things go pretty fast.

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