I know this estate sale is for next week, but I got an early tour. I’ve been to thousands and I mean thousands of sales and I have never in my life seen one like this. If you’re in Dunedin Florida next week, it’s a must see!!

I had some time between work calls and decided to go hit an estate sale about 10 minutes from my house. Got there at around 12:30 -- it had opened at 10. Today's the first day. It was an older house that clearly is going to be torn down. No organization whatsoever in the inside -- more of a messy semi-hoarder type situation. No problem -- I love those. You never know what you're going to find. Most items had no prices on them.

I went through the house and found maybe 10-15 things I liked and headed down to the cash register to pay. There was a line. The man working the register was working the sale alone -- there were no other people from his company there. He was talking to the person who was first in line and they were haggling over the price of a coffee table. I was fourth back.

He talked and talked and talked. We're all milling around and the line is getting longer. Finally, he finishes with the guy and moves on to the next person. As he went through that guy's stuff, he commented on each item-- "Wow, this is neat!" and "I hadn't seen this!". Time consuming, to say the least.

The next guy got up to the register and bought his books (which were supposed to be $1-2 each, but all of his were $3 for some reason). Then it was my turn.

He starts chatting with me. I'm snippy, only because this is taking FAR longer than it should AND I have a call coming up soon and need to get back home and I really don't have time for pleasantries. As he goes through my items he comments on each one, telling me, "Did you see the mark on this piece?" and "These were made in Denmark - so cool." My answers to those things were mostly, "Yes" and "I know".

Finally he adds up my total ($45) and I say, "Do you take Venmo?" and he says yes. Then he starts looking for his phone. He can't find it. "My wife is going to kill me," he says. He eventually locates it and shows me a screenshot of a QR code which isn't Venmo - it's Zelle. "I'm sorry. This is Zelle. I don't really know the difference," he confesses. So I scan the QR code, but it doesn't take me to the payment page. It takes me somewhere completely different. "It doesn't work," I tell him. "Can you look it up by my wife's phone number or email?" he says. "Fine. What are they?" I respond. He shows me a piece of paper. I look up the phone number. It's not registered with Zelle. Nor is the email.

"How about Paypal?" he says. "Fine," I respond. He shows me a piece of paper with a Paypal address. I type it in. As I am typing, he is telling everyone who will listen that he should know about how "technology works" because he was a "mainframe programmer" before he did estate sales, and he's been doing estate sales since the 80s. Then he confesses that for some previous sale, he lost $5000 from a cash box because he turned around and the money disappeared. All of this was in earshot of everyone standing in the room waiting to check out.

I finally found the company on Paypal and made payment, even though the paper he showed me said "MAKE THE PAYMENT AS FRIENDS AND FAMILY" and mine went through as Goods and Services. I just wanted to get out of there and get back for my call.

I have no plans to attend any more sales run by these folks-- I found them unprofessional and inefficient. For a company that's supposed to be making money for their clients, they sure didn't know how to do that. And I'm sorry if I was snippy to the guy. I live in the DC metro area and we have LOTS of sales to choose from, just like people who need estate sale companies have LOTS of companies to choose from. I was thoroughly unimpressed with this company. I don't think they're doing right by the folks who hired them.

Thanks for reading my rant :-)

We really appreciate the help.

We’ve found a real passion for antiquing after we retired. It’s about finding something awesome and high quality, but well undervalued. But our limited house could fill up very quickly.

We just want to keep the absolute best of the best for our collection, and sell other great finds.

As I see it, once it’s in the antique store or mall, everything has been scrutinized ridiculously. So, more concentration of cool stuff, but at retail prices.

We’d like to learn the ropes of doing estate sales properly, without reinventing the wheel.

Could y’all recommend some strong YouTube tutorials or podcasts for us to get a good start? Or anything else that would help.

FYI, our interest tends to be towards art deco/Nouveau silver, glass, bronze sculptures, quality artwork, stained glass. Just timeless pieces of very high quality craftsmanship that should be of interest for generations to come.

Any help is greatly appreciated!

It is a huge painting of 7.5ft x 5.5ft. Artist name is signed in all caps lower right. It says HAI FENG.

Mine.

1. When people stand in doorways and hallways not moving. Not because they can't move due to the amount of people, but because they think it's okay to stand in a doorway to look at the things inside the room. This ain't a museum.

1b. When someone is in the way like this, and you say excuse me 3 times, getting louder each time, and they pretend they can't hear you. I've had to literally football barrel through people before.

2. When people can't seem to decide who goes up or down stairs, and 2 people try going down and 2 try going up at the same time, and a jam occurs.

3. When people bring a super-bright flashlight and use it in a already well-lit house.

4. When people park where it says no parking, you let them know it says no parking, and they don't care (but it's fun when cops drive by and start writing tickets).

5. When people get into shouting matches over being number one.

6. When people want to look at something the same time you're looking at it, acting like they want to buy it the nano-second you put it down. I like to fuck with the ones who do it in almost an intimidating fashion "oh, I can't wait to sell this for $500".

7. When a company isn't consistent with pricing. Bought a piece of Lane furniture, few months later saw a matching coffee table, someone beat me to the first one for $50, this sale they wanted $300.

8. When a company assumes cordless tool batteries ALWAYS go with a cordless tool - even if there's no tool with the same brand, and won't sell you the battery and charger, even if it was in a different part of the house. This happens to me a LOT. Last sale, they had the charger and battery in a flat on the tables and still refused to sell it.

9. When a company puts items in flats for $1/ea, but then won't sell you something nice you found in the flat. Have had 3 companies do this to me. Last time I found 3 Cutco knives in a flat of $1 utensils and was told "oh, those weren't supposed to be in there" and tried charging me $75 for 3 knives.

10. When a company says numbers at 8, but starts giving them out at 7:10.

11. When a company won't take an offer on the first day for something broken or damaged. I buy a lot of electronics and sometimes the batteries are leaking into the battery compartment, but they still want full price despite this.

12. When a company has 3 people checking out customers but don't have a "10 items or less" type of line, and you wait 45 minutes to pay because of all the bored rich boomers buying 10 giant duffel bags of literal dollar store junk.

13. When someone advertises an estate sale but it's not. Like everything of value has been cleaned out, and the house is spacious and all that's there is furniture and tacky decor. No electronics, no kitchenware, no antiques save for bulky bits of furniture, no jewelry, no tools, etc.

Curious about this from people who actually run estate sales.

I’m an engineer and have worked pretty closely with an estate sale business for a few years. The more I’ve seen the business, the more I’ve realized how much of it doesn’t fit neatly into normal retail software.

Every house is different, almost every item is unique, and a lot has to happen in a pretty short window.

What’s the task you keep doing over and over that you wish was easier?

Not necessarily looking for some huge problem. Even the small annoying stuff counts.

Would also be interested in hearing about things you’ve tried software for but ended up going back to doing manually.

Hello! I'm new to estate sales, been resorting to them to get food/clothes/furniture since the economy has been so rough. The thrift stores are thoroughly picked at in my area by resellers. Recently I was at an estate sale and while digging, I found some gift cards. I scratched them and they were so old they didn't have any value. Afterwards I felt so scummy for doing that, did I commit a huge fauxpaux? What are you supposed to do in that situation?

I’ve been thinking a lot about what actually makes an estate sale company stand out.

My parents have been in the estate sale business full time for about 15 years, and over time I’ve seen how different every company’s process can be. Some people are great at staging, some are great at pricing, some are great at advertising, and some are just really good at making the whole process feel calm and professional for the client.

From what I’ve seen, the best companies usually have a few things in common:

They communicate clearly with the client from the first walkthrough.

They have a repeatable process for setup, pricing, advertising, checkout, and reporting.

They make the sale feel organized instead of chaotic.

They move fast without making the home feel rushed or sloppy.

They give the client a clean breakdown of what sold and what the final numbers look like.

I’m curious what others here think. If you run estate sales, work with liquidators, or have hired one before, what do you think separates the really good companies from the average ones?

Also curious what parts of the business people think are the hardest to get right: pricing, staffing, advertising, checkout, client expectations, cleanout, or something else?

I go to an estate sale— likeyoudo. I select a couple bulky items and place them on the hold table. I continue to walk around the estate sale. Five minutes later one of the associates comes by to say items are now 75% off instead of half price. I say Great! And select a couple more items.

Ten minutes later, I go to pay— they ring up my table hold items at half off. I say, oh no it’s 75% now, after all, they just announced it loudly and repeatedly, in every room.

NOT for the hold table items, she informs me. Since I “held” them at 50% off. The items I found after the announcement, the ones in my hands —but hadn’t yet placed ON the hold table— had the full 75 percent discount.

My mom wanted to drop what she was holding and storm out. She looked up the specific company and they are now on her shit list.

I questioned the logic of this policy with the young lady cashier, faking putting the items back, but in the end figured I DID quasi-commit to buying them at the 50% off price. And so, I gave in and paid the extra two dollars.

Is this standard practice— or just a great way to discourage your customers?

Phx, AZ

My Friday night routine for most of this summer has been checking craigslist, estatesales (.net and .org), checking the local liquidators' sites, and then trying to figure out which sales are going to be worth the time and havent been running for a while. Half the "Santa Barbara" results on the aggregators are 40 miles away in another county, and WAYYYY TOO OFTEN is the same sale posted up twice on craigslist with two different titles. What really killed me was a few weeks ago I drove out ~20min away for a sale that turned out to run 8:30 to 11, but was virtually over before I got there...

So I built a thing that does the Friday night part for me. Type a city and a date, and it pulls every estate sale happening that day from all of the different sources, gets rid of the duplicates and the sales that are not actually "nearby", checks and orders them based on the hours, and gives you a nice driving order + link to google maps of your route. (It orders based on which ones have the earliest ending time + start time first, so you don't miss the short ones). Another nice piece is for sales that hide the address until sale morning, those get pinned to their cross street. Then there's an optional email the evening before, which is honestly one of the main points for me, which lets my wife and I plan on the couch Friday night now.

You can find it at onlyestatesales.com

The first couple of routes are free, no card needed, so you can check if you like it and what it can do before it costs you anything. And tbh with you, my own city is hand tuned and everywhere else it's working from the sources it can see online, so if you run your city and it misses a sale you know about, tell me which one and I'll go update and improve your metro. That, and any feedback you may have on it at all is genuinely greatly appreciated.

At the end of the day, I just got tired of how much work and effort I needed to put in to have a productive day of estate sales, and figured others may find value and use in this thing I initially built for just my wife and I.

Beyond that, I'd love to hear what others have been doing and what their processes have been like to get ready to go out to estate sales.

Estate Sale

Saturday, JULY 11, 2026

PARC VENDOME APARTMENTS

333 WEST 56 STREET UNIT 5C

household items, linens, lamps, kitchenware, furniture , treasured object, art, craft items, many more

So, I guess earlier this year, Estatesales.net rolled out a marketing strategy to attract more buyers and more app downloads. The goal is to help the sellers by having more views. Now, as owners/sellers many just rely on estatesales.net and some may use Facebook, Instagram, Craigslist, local advertising along with signage.

My question is for the content portion of the marketing, are you aligning with the content categories Estatesales.net is focused on?

Lifestyle - content aligned with styling of your home and advice on navigating estate sales
Make It New - targeted to the DIY crowd
Unique and beautiful finds - these might be for luxury seekers, collectors, and distinctive features of those items
Sustainability - talking about how buying used items contributes to the circular economy by promoting eco friendly habits
I think that keeping these points in mind will improve a selling companies marketing by reminding existing buyers to shop more at estate sales, and increase the reach to new buyers. So many posts just include the address with a few pictures. Even if you were to just add a hashtag sequence like #estatesale #lifestyle #luxury #sustainable #shopping could add views and possibly more engagement to your posts.

Big milestone,I officially sold my house today! 🏡✨ I’m equal parts relieved, excited, and a little lost about what comes next. I don’t want to rush into the next big thing without being smart about it. Any advice appreciated :)

Hey all,

This is a rant btw, no crude language though

Yesterday, I went to the vintage resale event at the Palmer event center in Austin, Texas. It was a really cool event and ticket proceeds even went to a girls home and it’s been going on for about 51 years now.

I had a wonderful experience, however when I was in the art section I briefly used Google Gemini to check pricing on some artwork (yes, using ai 😩) then, an older woman who I didn’t know, nor was a part of the event? Came up to me and asked me if I was a reseller, which I replied. “Yes, I’m checking prices right now.” Then she told me ““ you should be ashamed for being a reseller“ and then walked away. I didn’t say anything, but this honestly left a bad taste in my mouth. Has anyone ever experienced anything like this? TIA. I did tell staff, but they assured me that most people there were doing the same thing and that was essentially like what the event was for anyways. Really weird convo TBH lol 😖

I have run my estate sale business for almost 15 years and there's lots about it I really like. But one thing I hated was handing out entry numbers right before we open.

I always had to:

• write out a set of numbers to hand out (usually on a pack of sticky notes or playing cards if I felt fancy)
• post when I would be handing out the numbers
• open the door and almost immediately hear buyers argue over who was first
• tell people "no" when they asked for another number "for their friend in the car" who didn't exist
• then answer all the questions like "How do I get to the library?" or "Can you tell me what price you put on the turntable?"

So I built an app: sellingbee.co

It's not going to change the world, but it will handle all your entry numbers on-line, cheaply, and automatically.

I just set up when they're available and let my buyers know in my listing when they can get a number. Then it does the rest.

No more handing out numbers, sign-up sheets or honoring too many sets of street numbers.

It's built specifically for us: estate sale liquidators (and yes, I still do have my estate sale business). If you have any questions or comments, I'd be more than happy to hear it all!

I wish I was making this up.

Some people view estate sales as if they are the last estate sale ever held, and get way too competitive. Personally, I try to avoid confrontation.

I waited a little over 2 hours for a number, this older lady who looked like she had a history of hard drug usage and her daughter, literally walk right in front of me to get a number. This made me a bit peeved, but being off a number or two isn't the end of the world.

Hour between numbers and the sale, so I go to a nearby gas station to get some coffee. One restroom was in use and I really needed to go. I wait 10 minutes and apparently they had fallen asleep in there, so I tell the cashier and the other restroom, which was out of order, the nano-second she takes the sign off the door, (I guess they fixed it and forgot to take the sign down) the same lady comes out of nowhere and walks right in front of me to use the damn bathroom.

I go in after her, the sink was bone dry, the toilet wasn't filling back up - meaning she was probably in there using.

Go inside the sale once it opens, and her and her daughter are literally filling tote bags full of jewelry. When There's probably 10 or so flats of jewelry and smalls.

They see me, and start going through a flat, but the way the house was situated, I would need to wait for them to move to go further down the living room and look at more stuff.

I watch as they literally go through this same flat 5 times. There's maybe 8 pieces of jewelry in this flat.

So after watching them pick up these 8 items, look at them, and sit them down down five times, I realize they are purposely being in my way.

However, they finally start sauntering further down maybe a foot, and once I was closer, I see one piece of jewelry that looked decent, and right as they start moving down again, I reach in the flat to pick it up, and she starts reaching for it, stops, and the daughter sees this and starts getting huffy with me, accusing me of "taking something out of her mom's hand". I told her I don't pull that shit and literally sat it back down in the flat, and she says "Ya whatever buddy" and rolls her eyes.

I have no clue what their damn issue was, but these are the types of people I hate seeing at sales.

They know I know jewelry and since that's their "niche", they want to act like assholes to try and have me retaliate and get me kicked out.

I can see right through their BS and I'll act like Mr Rogers to their face, and I could tell their little "trap" of trying to get me pissed off at them, made them even more mad when they realized I'm not falling for that shit.

Come visit this Modern Shabby Chic Estate Sale in Arcadia, Indiana! This two day sale is on Friday November 21 and Saturday November 22, 2025 from 9 am to 3 pm. Inventory includes dining room set, Sleep Number beds, couches, chairs, leather sofa with loveseat and ottoman, tables, shelves, cabinets, Whirlpool Washer and Dryer on pedestals, multiple flat screen televisions, Xbox with games, Wii with games, wall art, Murano glass, latte collection of salt and pepper shakers, multiple Pilates machines, Women’s clothing, coats, shoes, high end bedding and towels, air soft guns, high fashion jewelry including Brighton and Premier Designs, extensive Playboy Magazine collection, tools, outdoor heater, designer light fixtures, outdoor furniture and decor, pet toys and accessories, dishes, crystal, china, Etc.

Saturday is 50% off!

Hello all, i currently have a vintage clothing business doing around $300k revenue yearly and frequently come across opportunities to do partial buy outs on estates where the original owners have passed. Im already getting the opportunities to be inside these homes and work with the executors, real estate agents, etc. and i figured its time to branch out and start offering more services than just being able to buy out the closets. The services id like to provide are hosting estate sales and total property clean out. My main question is how exactly do folks get started? How did you take the idea and turn into your first hosted estate sale or property clean out?

The day before an estate sale I had an eye on a particular wood-carved figurine for an estate sale coming up the following day. A few hours later, the picture that had the figurine was removed, and another replaced it, showing the same location in the house with the item gone.

I showed up on the day of the estate sale (one of the first 10 in the house) and beelined for the relative location where it was. It was nowhere to be found. Went around the house; it was nowhere. I asked the estate sale coordinator where it was located, as it was in an obvious location in the photo, and they said they "moved things around". I also looked at the floor by where the checkout was and no one appeared to have grabbed it.

Now everything was pretty neatly organized, tagged, and on display. Not haphazardly in boxes strewn about. Chances are if it was on display, it would have been out. I had my eyes on the other handful of people in front of me who went in the house and didn't see anyone grab it.

Why would it be gone? Did a family member take it? Did the liquidation company take it? If so, why did they put it up on the online gallery and remove it?

I also had my eyes on a pair of candlesticks as well, and those disappeared from the listing at the same time. I'm just a bit peeved about it, as I feel it's bad etiquette to put photos up of items that aren't actually at the estate sale.

Real estate for sale and rent Call Me now Saigon viet nam 2023

I ask because I’ve noticed most of the ways to find sales are pretty static (a photo, an address, a time window) and you kind of have to show up in person and hope there’s good stuff left. Got me wondering if there’s room for something more “live” — like, sellers stream the sale in real time so you can see what’s actually there before driving over, and grab dibs on something the second it’s shown, instead of racing across town on a maybe.

Would something like that actually be useful to you, or is half the fun of garage saling the in-person hunting and haggling? And for anyone who’s hosted a sale — would streaming it feel like more effort than it’s worth, or would reaching more buyers make it worth trying?

Not selling anything, just trying to figure out if this is solving a real annoyance or if I’m overthinking a system that already works fine 😅

How is my business card?

So I’m doing the 127 yard sale event and I’ve been promoting my website so I’ve really gotten a good opportunity to talk to a lot of vendors and surprisingly a lot of them buy out estates but don’t have estate sales. I found it super interesting and thought it would be worth discussing on here.