From the response I received on my post about where is the good junk, I know that other people are wondering the same thing.
I was talking to my friend Lucy this morning- Lucy has her own estate sale business- and we came up with some theories.
I have to admit, with the general state of things, I do feel a little petty complaining about not being able to find good junk- I'm completely aware that in the scheme of things, its a pretty small problem.
I'm adding scans of trade cards to this post just to break up the text. They have NOTHING to do with what I'm saying- but if you like them, click on them and they'll open in a new screen and you can download them to your computer.
So here's the basis of our theory:
I'd say, at least in my experience in setting up estate sales, about a half are really downsizing sales- a couple is getting older, the family has moved, upkeep on the house is a pain, so they are moving to a smaller place and want to get rid of stuff. These are often very good sales because they'll have an accumulation of possesions that have been acquired over a period of time.
Another quarter of sales are moving sales- this might be a person moving to a smaller place, a different place, a family relocating for a job- but for whatever reason, they want to get rid of stuff before they move because its not going to fit in with their new digs.
The last fourth is a true estate sale- a person has died, and their possessions are being sold.
An aside- I've often had estate sale customers walk into a sale and say "Oh, did the person who lived here die?" or "This is so sad, that the owner died", or "Are these your mother's things?".
Some customers are really creeped or freaked out by the idea of selling off an estate, or think its a sad thing.
In all the estate sales I've dealt with, I only remember one sale where the people involved were sad. It was an older couple that was moving because the house was two stories and the husband had trouble getting up and down the stairs- and the wife was upset with her husband because he couldn't physically manage living in a two story house- and she let him know it, and let us know it- something tells me that maybe this wasn't the first time she had been upset with her husband- or just upset in general.
Generally, most families were so glad to have an estate sale company come in and take care of the details of selling the possesions for them. Look around your house and imagine trying to empty it in two or three days. It could take me two or three days just to figure out which remotes would be ok to throw away.
So- back to the theory- its the economy, duh. Owners, heirs, people thinking about moving- they know that they aren't going to get top dollar for real estate, so they're going to wait it out until the housing market is better. Since there aren't as many moves, there isn't any urgency to have estate sales and empty out houses.
So- where's the good stuff? It's there, it's just not for sale right now. And when the economy picks up- the stuff will be for sale and (cross your fingers), there will be a plethora.
So- how do you make this work for you? Well- if you have stuff to SELL- this might be a good time- theory of supply and demand would say you'd get a good price- but I'm not that big on economic theory as it applies to real life.
Of course, this is just an opinion, with absolutely no empirical evidence to back it up. Your mileage may vary.
