I’d been to estate sales from time to time (those sales designed to empty the homes of the recently deceased, often organized by professional dealers), but I’d never been involved in one for a member of my own family. An interesting and somewhat disturbing process. I was not the organizer; I was one step removed, as the pseudo-step-daughter of Bob, the recently deceased. The sale was organized by Bob’s daughters, who hired the estate sale professionals.
The process, as I understand it, goes like this: the family contacts the estate sale professionals, who first come and evaluate the house’s potential for an estate sale (after the family has selected what they want). At that point, Bob’s home was declared marginally suitable (i.e., he wasn’t quite enough of a junk collector for their taste). Warnings were apparently given, that the family should not take any more of the remaining goods, that such acts would render the house unsuitable/unprofitable. Still, the family was given a special day,one last chance to purchase goods they’d not taken previously. Last weekend was the real sale. It had been advertised in the newspaper, and there were large bright red and yellow placards, prominently displayed at the various nearby street corners, leading people to the house.
My mother decided, after the family day, that she really wanted to purchase two of Bob’s chairs. She had called the estate sale people requesting to be let into the sale early, so she could pick these out and buy them before the place was open to the public. She’d understood that they would let her in at 8:45 (the sale was to begin at 9:00). To my amazement, when we arrived, there were cars lining this quiet residential street and there was a cluster of people waiting in front of the house. There was a signup sheet to get in and people already had plans about what they were going to try to reach before the item in question was snapped up by others. Clearly these folks were experienced estate sale attendees.
When we arrived at 8:45, the professionals [three rather abrupt and unpleasant women] told us that they had not agreed to let her in early, but…after some negotiation…they agreed to let her in among the first cohort. At 9 AM, one of the women came out and began reading off the first names from the list [we were numbers 2 and 3}, and these were let in. People rushed in, spreading out throughout the house. Fortunately my mother and I were able to get the chairs she wanted.
Everything in the house had been labeled with a price. The chairs were $65 and $75, I think. A set of 10 German, hand painted fruit plates with birds accurately represented on them sold for $25. We saw two beaded buckles I’d made for Bob on sale for $8 each. Mother paid $1 for a jumbo Valentine she’d given him one year. It was a very weird feeling to be wandering around in a house we knew so well, selecting the private possessions of someone we had loved so well—and seeing others picking up, evaluating, selecting, buying these items, many of which held dear memories. I was grateful that Bob’s daughters were not there to witness what seemed somehow crass and inappropriate, a commercial dealing with what should be private. I was sorry that my mother was there to see it (even though it was her decision to do so).
Yet what else can one do in a society so fraught with consumerism? Even Bob, who was definitely not by any means an impulse buyer or a squanderer of resources (quite the reverse), had accumulated more goods than his family could absorb. A huge proportion of Americans have far more goods than we need, and definitely far more goods than our children will want—they all have their own homes bulging with possessions! Once family members have selected the things they want or need, there typically remains a mountain of other things that can be thrown out….or sold in an estate sale. The former seems more distasteful than the latter. On the positive side, an estate sale is a mode of redistribution and an entertainment. It can be quite interesting to wander about looking at some stranger’s possessions, seeking treasures as yet unrecognized and therefore inexpensive. ‘One person’s junk is another’s treasure’. But wandering through one’s relative’s home and seeing his possessions displayed, as in a store, I found quite unsettling.