Sunday morning I decided to pursue my fave pastime though, squeezing in a few estate sales before slumber party pick up time. One sale in particular had been drawing in my curiosity all weekend...a downsizing sale ... it was calling my name. It was the only featured sale from the Estatesales.org email that didn't have any photos, but it did have a laundry list of items. Still not one pic, odd. Hmm #1 ... in the sale description they noted that they were moving into a home half the size of their current one and no estate sale company was hosting it. Hmmm #2, I figured it had to be worth a stop. Now if you aren't in the know, Sundays are typically the final day of any tag sale and they're one of the best times to shop one, ESPECIALLY if you're a true bargain hunter or vintage dealer. Most items are half the cost of what they were on day one or two and if the seller hasn't had great sales, they're very receptive to negotiating prices to simply get the stuff OUT of their home. Half price on estate sale pricing is one of the best things on Earth! Two other bonuses: if it's an overloaded home (note: don't think hoarders, think a lifetime of generally well kept possessions), they'll still have LOTS and LOTS of stuff left on the final day and a bunch of items may make their debut on the last day because the homeowner didn't have the time or energy to get to them at the beginning. On the downside, sometimes Sundays can be a complete and total bust. If sales have gone well, there may not be enough left over to justify selling anything on Sunday and sellers will call it off early. If you thought that hot item would be there on day 2 or 3... sorry, no, it's probably not going to happen. And, yes, often the sellers are really tired and they aren't going to be so hap hap happy to deal with more customers or answer questions.
So, by now you're wondering, was this mystery sale a win or bust? Unfortunately, this sale gets a big fat "FAIL" rating in my book. There were lots and lots of items left in the home (that's a bad sign on day 3) and only a small area of the home was actually open for shopping. I have to say, that the ad felt a bit misleading once I stepped foot inside and found that only 3 rooms were open for the sale. Then I started to notice something rather odd around the house... papers - papers everywhere.. lots of printed out papers under everything...nearly every item had a color printout from eBay laying underneath or taped to each item for sale. What the? Did I just stumble into the Twilight Zone of estate sales? Apparently I fell into someone's idea of an estate sale vs. what one actually is. Somewhere, somehow, the homeowner here got the notion that they needed to justify prices by providing an eBay listing printout and placing it on or under every item. I guess they just couldn't stop with adding a pricing sticker on each item. Seller guilt? This was a first for me... I've seen thrift stores practice this occasionally to support a markup from the normal flat pricing, but never have I been to a tag sale where it was done across the board. If I can be blunt, there's no faster way to annoy your buyers (and I mean anger them) than by providing printouts from eBay listings or sales, with said items. Buyers will assume from the get go that you must be an irrational person and not even bother to try and negotiate. After all, you went to all that trouble to research and printout over 100 listing pages, but apparently never felt the need to go ahead and actually sell any of the items on eBay or any other online marketplace. Also, there are a LOT of insider ins and outs to eBay and other marketplaces. You may have chosen a listing of a different era or condition than your item, you may have printed out an active listing with pricing that is way off from the market value, or say a Buy It Now listing that is open to lower offers, or you've printed out a completed, but unsold listing. Please don't do this! Buyers really .... REALLY don't like it. You're item will likely never sell. All in all, I think this seller may have spent more on ink toner than they made in profit at their sale. You live, you learn.
Do's and Don'ts
- You can have a successful sale or you can have a fail sale. Don't hold your own estate sale if you've never had one before. If you do, better to call it a yard sale and expect yard sale prices.
- Hire a professional liquidator who knows the market, and even more so, the local market and will price your items attractively to sell.
- Do not base all of your pricing off of eBay listings.
- Do not printout eBay listing pages and tape them to your items.
- Do not tape anything to valuable items...you may well ruin or substantially downgrade the value by doing so.
- Do, place a string tag on items of value that will not damage the item.
- Don't make false claims about what is or isn't available in your ad.
- Provide a real assessment of what you're selling and good photos of key items.
- Don't run an estate sale ad without photos! Descriptions are good, but a picture is worth a thousand words. What may not mean something to you may mean something to a collector.
- Do adequate homework via multiple websites, the library, or better yet use an appraiser to provide sound pricing that takes condition and features into account on any item of value.
- Don't forget...you could be missing out on a lot of revenue by skipping use of an estate sale service provider... you may price a high value item way too low.
