Should I have and Estate Sale or an Auction?
We often get asked this question and here’s the answer.
Auction Companies are like any other business. There are good ones and bad ones. Here’s the low down on the good ones. They only want the very best items from an estate. The best ones I know of in the Bay Area will only handle items that they think will sell for $200 or more. The other decent ones have similar thresholds.
That means most of your items from the estate are not going to make it to the auction block and you’ll be left to dispose of the majority of the estate yourself. Then of course since the auction company cherry picked the good items you will have nothing Special left to use as a Draw or Lure in the event you want to have your own sale to dispose of the remainder of the estate.
A properly conducted estate sale will draw literally hundreds of people over the course of 2 or 3 days. More people will see and have a chance to buy your stuff than the traffic that some high end antique stores get in a year.
But if we do discover an important piece then we will definetly market it in another manner. We have contacts at major auction houses all over the globe. I’m talking about auction companies that get bids up into the millions of dollars. We also have antique shops, specialty shops, individual collectors and museums that we deal with to market rare or special items.
In conclusion an estate sale conducted by us is capable of liquidating everything from the dishes to the Picasso……….