As I was talking about in the kitchen/cooking forum, I'm about to have this estate sale. I have everything riding on this sale right now. And time is not on my side. It also seems to me as much progress I make, something always manages to screw things up for me. I knew after my mother passed away I was going to need to do a sale. Knowing this I began to sort and gather her belongings to the basement of our home. Because of various issues I thought it best NOT to have the estate sale on the main floor. Mostly due to the shear volume of stuff I had and because over the years we hadn't kept it up to snuff. Most of our money's going into a now gone apartment that once was in the basement.
I read with great interest Ldkchef2k's comments and suggestions about how she ran an estate sale. Unfortunilly, again, I don't have this much time any longer. I'm surprised the gas and electric haven't been shut off on this house now as it is. Then of course there's an issue about being 7+ months behind on mortgage. So basically every day, day in and day out I get up, and spend 6-10 hours a day, sorting, packing and moving more and more stuff to the basement.
I was sappose to get help from my best friend and my fiance. Both of whom I owe money to, if they'd help not only did I offer to pay them off, but also pay a bit extra for their assistance. My fiance' as of yet hasn't not helped at all. Getting my best friend who, ironically complains that he's bored all day long waiting to help his ailing mother, well, let's say, at best he's moved about 10 boxes, before he had to "leave".
That's left it all up to me. And it's taken for ever! I do see the end of the tunnel so to speak, just have a few issues I need to work out. Like I was mentioning in the cooking forum. I've done 99% of the work myself. I only wanted to hire somone that has no emotional or financial ties to the stuff to help fairly price items out for me. I stressed to this woman that I can't hold out for every last dime...in a way. Basically telling her I don't want stuff prices so high that folks just walk out. For $150 I think this is a good deal to be honest. I really wish my fiance could do this for me, and even offered her as much money, she cannot do it.
Ldychef2k,
I understand what you are saying about displaying. I'm trying to work on this currently. I'm just about done hauling everything I don't want, need, or can do without down there. My only issue now is how to display it all. I've taken every shelving unit, and every table I can get my hands on in order to display things on. (In fact the shelves and tables are for sale as well!) Once it's all down there, sorted and some what displayed, my last duty was to go shelf by shelf, table by table and CLEAN everything. I agree, as someone with 20 years of retail managemnt expierence, presentation is half the sale! I've gone out and bought 200w bulbs and put socket doublers in every cieling light socket so everything is bright and visiable. On the days of the sale I'll even make sure I can open drapes I've got covering windows for even more light.
But I still don't have enough space to display everything properly. And I have nobody I can borrow from either. I've tried calling around a few rental places and the best I could find is $8 per rental table per day. I'm figuring I'd need at least five more tables for at least 5 days or more. I cannot afford this!
To add insult to injury. I'm not in a prime location either. I MUST have a city permit or I can be closed down and part of that permit restricts me to just one sign in front of my house. I cannot drive up the block and place a sign at the closest intersection directing folks to my sale. Permit costs $25 and I'm also restricted to just one estate/basement/garage sale per year. That's it! My fiance is lucky, she lives on a main street, if her and her mother got up one morning and suddendly decided to have a sale, they could set one up in half an hour and have dozens of customers just by opening thier garge door! The first summer after my mother was diagnosted to haveing cancer, I had a garage sale to start selling off stuff, and even though I'd advertised in my local paper, I had a whole of 3 customers in 2 days. It was a disaster! This time around I'm budgeting $200 for advertising in a dozen papers, and Estatesales.net, also craigslist but that's free.
Other issues I'm running into. How to display things that my mom made. She'd once thought about doing an ebay store making hand crafted hats, scarves, mittens, afghans and so on. I have no place to hang any of this stuff. And then there's the issue of trying to keep all the parts of a set together as folks paw through them.
I've thought I could use a bunch of rubber made totes I've bought over the years and just doing some color codes for prices, and just markign eveything in particular totes $x.xx each. Prime example is that of all the tupper ware mom and grand mom had. Hundreds of pieces of the stuff and I'll never use it all. I'd thought about just dumping all the containers in one large tote and having a small pan with lids and marking this 10 cents per container w/lid. Or make bid on it all. But I can see the how's and why's folks don't want to rumage through things too. It's a basement, I've got 40 boxes of mixed books and no way to display these other then spreading the boxes out on the floor and having they buyers kneel down and paw through the books. NOT the way I would like to do it.
So without rambling on anymore. I need to get every tip and or trick everyone has that I can apply to get the very top dollar I can from this sale. I have certain restrictions, like city ordinances I can do nothing about. But after that anything, everything is game.
Thanks,
Jax
I read with great interest Ldkchef2k's comments and suggestions about how she ran an estate sale. Unfortunilly, again, I don't have this much time any longer. I'm surprised the gas and electric haven't been shut off on this house now as it is. Then of course there's an issue about being 7+ months behind on mortgage. So basically every day, day in and day out I get up, and spend 6-10 hours a day, sorting, packing and moving more and more stuff to the basement.
I was sappose to get help from my best friend and my fiance. Both of whom I owe money to, if they'd help not only did I offer to pay them off, but also pay a bit extra for their assistance. My fiance' as of yet hasn't not helped at all. Getting my best friend who, ironically complains that he's bored all day long waiting to help his ailing mother, well, let's say, at best he's moved about 10 boxes, before he had to "leave".
That's left it all up to me. And it's taken for ever! I do see the end of the tunnel so to speak, just have a few issues I need to work out. Like I was mentioning in the cooking forum. I've done 99% of the work myself. I only wanted to hire somone that has no emotional or financial ties to the stuff to help fairly price items out for me. I stressed to this woman that I can't hold out for every last dime...in a way. Basically telling her I don't want stuff prices so high that folks just walk out. For $150 I think this is a good deal to be honest. I really wish my fiance could do this for me, and even offered her as much money, she cannot do it.
Ldychef2k,
I understand what you are saying about displaying. I'm trying to work on this currently. I'm just about done hauling everything I don't want, need, or can do without down there. My only issue now is how to display it all. I've taken every shelving unit, and every table I can get my hands on in order to display things on. (In fact the shelves and tables are for sale as well!) Once it's all down there, sorted and some what displayed, my last duty was to go shelf by shelf, table by table and CLEAN everything. I agree, as someone with 20 years of retail managemnt expierence, presentation is half the sale! I've gone out and bought 200w bulbs and put socket doublers in every cieling light socket so everything is bright and visiable. On the days of the sale I'll even make sure I can open drapes I've got covering windows for even more light.
But I still don't have enough space to display everything properly. And I have nobody I can borrow from either. I've tried calling around a few rental places and the best I could find is $8 per rental table per day. I'm figuring I'd need at least five more tables for at least 5 days or more. I cannot afford this!
To add insult to injury. I'm not in a prime location either. I MUST have a city permit or I can be closed down and part of that permit restricts me to just one sign in front of my house. I cannot drive up the block and place a sign at the closest intersection directing folks to my sale. Permit costs $25 and I'm also restricted to just one estate/basement/garage sale per year. That's it! My fiance is lucky, she lives on a main street, if her and her mother got up one morning and suddendly decided to have a sale, they could set one up in half an hour and have dozens of customers just by opening thier garge door! The first summer after my mother was diagnosted to haveing cancer, I had a garage sale to start selling off stuff, and even though I'd advertised in my local paper, I had a whole of 3 customers in 2 days. It was a disaster! This time around I'm budgeting $200 for advertising in a dozen papers, and Estatesales.net, also craigslist but that's free.
Other issues I'm running into. How to display things that my mom made. She'd once thought about doing an ebay store making hand crafted hats, scarves, mittens, afghans and so on. I have no place to hang any of this stuff. And then there's the issue of trying to keep all the parts of a set together as folks paw through them.
I've thought I could use a bunch of rubber made totes I've bought over the years and just doing some color codes for prices, and just markign eveything in particular totes $x.xx each. Prime example is that of all the tupper ware mom and grand mom had. Hundreds of pieces of the stuff and I'll never use it all. I'd thought about just dumping all the containers in one large tote and having a small pan with lids and marking this 10 cents per container w/lid. Or make bid on it all. But I can see the how's and why's folks don't want to rumage through things too. It's a basement, I've got 40 boxes of mixed books and no way to display these other then spreading the boxes out on the floor and having they buyers kneel down and paw through the books. NOT the way I would like to do it.
So without rambling on anymore. I need to get every tip and or trick everyone has that I can apply to get the very top dollar I can from this sale. I have certain restrictions, like city ordinances I can do nothing about. But after that anything, everything is game.
Thanks,
Jax