BEFORE AND AFTER SETUP PREPARATION
Not all clients are pleased with the outcome of their sales. These clients are the ones that thought their items were worth more than the going rate. No one who owns an estatesales business will please everyone.
I’m just happy to say that 98 percent or so of my clients are so tickled that their relative’s items are sold. They didn’t know how to price or sell them. Nor did they know how to organize the big mess the family created while digging through the estate.
I’ve gone into homes where mounds of items were truly thrown this way and that.
Before Setup
After Setup
Often resulting in huge heaps in the middle of a room, families will seek that one item that’s been lost for years. Or perhaps it’s something they wanted before another family member arrived. Either way, I tell all clients that no matter how messy an estate is, my crew and I will organize it to perfection for an Estate Sale by Victoria. They’re always amazed that I hold true to my statement.
For me, it’s the easiest thing in the business to organize a once mounded home.
This reminds me of an estate I handled back in 1999. One of the townships contacted the probate commissioner to clean out the estate. Thus, we were called upon to do so.
This hoarder’s estate was literally filled with treasures. However, upon entering the small two-bedroom home in a very nice community, we had to move waist-high trash from the doorway to enter. I could not believe all the magazines and papers!
We had to stand on top of the papers while walking about the house, ducking through the doorways. And it only got better! At the back of this modest home, we noted the toilet no longer worked. The resident, since deceased, used to potty in vegetable cans and left them on the back porch! I kid you not! Oddly, there were no bugs in the house.
I hired men to carry out all the crap. (No pun intended.) Probate paid the bill, and we sold the remaining items. The sale was small, but probate was eventually able to clean up the house and sell it in as-is condition.
Whew! I don’t like these types of estates, and generally I won’t take them. But I had great helpers that did the entire cleanup. That was in my need-to-take-any-and-all-sales years to feed my four growing children.
Here’s a story from one of the first estates I handled.
THE ARENA1 AND A ST. LOUIS AVENUE ESTATE
One hot summer day in 1991, I rode with my auctioneer in an old red beat-up pickup truck to a home also in the same condition. We’d won the highest bid to buy out the contents from probate court earlier that week. Now that we owned the contents, we had to clean out any and all items that were sell-able, and many were. Since I knew in advance that the house had roaches, I opted to wear knee-high boots, a long-sleeve blouse, and jeans tucked into the boots, along with rubber gloves. Heaven forbid a baby roach would touch me! Thankfully, I escaped undefiled!
The small, white, bacon-grease-smelling, disheveled, shingled 1930s-style house clearly stated—no, almost screamed—a sadness that roamed about. I recall feeling and envisioning a story-like sadness, where perhaps the mother walked to and cleaned nearby office buildings or took in laundry, too tired to clean her home properly when finally home from a hard day’s work. Her hair would have possibly been washed once per week, piled upon her head in a bun while wearing a white rag-like scarf, dirty from each week’s work. The father, perhaps, walked too, working down the way at the carriage factory on the other side of the highway, just making it by, week after week. Late in life, I found out later, the mother gave birth to a baby girl, the only child they had. Sadly, the baby girl had a mental disability, but the parents were ever so loving and kind.
This daughter, when in her teens, begged her friends and her parents to chauffeur her to the local bus to the Arena (built in 1929, closed in 1994) when boxing stars and or country western singers came into town. I was told she’d lean up against the stage, holding the free pictures given to all as they entered the Arena. There she and others begged the stars for signatures. Apparently, she gathered quite a mound of signed pictures, which I kept. I also still have a signed postcard by Jack Dempsey in 1957 and a pair of advertising-size boxing gloves he signed.
The auctioneer had no problem digging in the mounds of smelly household items. One of the finds was a collection of cobalt blue small pitchers advertising Shirley Temple, the sweet child star, singer, and tap dancer that I and the masses fell in love with on the silver screen or TV.
As the auctioneer pulled items out, I’d wash them in the large white porcelain sink, making darn sure I never touched the sink with my body. No roaches bothered the sink, but many scurried away as we walked about and he searched. Each time I washed an item, I carried it to the truck to pack it for our future sale.
You might wonder why I’d take on such a horrific job. As a widow with four children, I had—and by golly, would do—whatever it took to take care of my babies, even if the estate was a falling-down, smelly old place filled with valuable vintage items. I’d do it and did so proudly!
The items brought in a great deal of income while at the same time carrying on the cycle of life.
I always feel it’s this cycle of life that infuses new energy to each item, thus bringing joy to those that purchase and admire it until it’s time for the cycle to run its course again.
I never know what treasures and stories await me when I’m commissioned each estate sale.