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The Anatomy of Estate Sales, Part Two
by Jean
Hubbell Asher
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Part One
It's
almost time and the pre-ordained line begins to form. At this point, no
words are exchanged between the first 20 or so people holding numbers,
the ones who will be able to enter the house in the first wave of estate
sale customers.
Inside the house
there is considerable tension, though perhaps not on the scale of that
outside the house. The workers are now in full work mode and wary ahead
of time of making mistakes in the hysteria of the first few minutes, perhaps
marking the wrong piece for the wrong dealer or allowing a small object
to find its way into a stray pocket or purse. What an estate sale worker
dreads the most in those few minutes is getting some of the more high strung
dealers vying for the same sale pieces. There is nothing serene about the
first half hour of the sale and we are steeling ourselves for this moment:
9:00am.
The man at the door
starts calling out the numbers...1, ...2,....3, up to the number the size
of the house and the work force can accommodate at one time. The rush is
on. The whole experience of the first few minutes is surreal: People
are running everywhere, pointing and yelling, identifying their desired
pieces to workers who follow, stickering these items with the buyer's name.
Buyers keep running and pointing and calling out, trying to get additional
pieces while others throughout the room are doing exactly the same thing
and often for the same item. They buy and buy without coming up for air
and don't even take a few seconds to examine a piece because that will
mean that they might lose out on something else. The volume is loud and
the language often crude when they lose out on a coveted item.
If the house is
large, customers circle round and round, making sure there is nothing left
for them to buy. Once the is shopping completed, sales slips are taken
to the cashiers and goods are beginning to be packed up with the
purchases often being examined for the first time. It is now about 9:30am
and although the sale has just begun, more than a third of the offerings
have been sold. The first buyers begin to exit the house.
The impatience
level for the next wave of buyers has been mounting with each passing minute.
When the weather presents the problem of rain, snow, heat or cold there
is understandably a lot of grousing from those waiting. At those times,
it's hard to even explain to yourself why this mission is so urgent. But
there you are, waiting until your number is called, watching as each person
leaves the house, making sure the line keeps moving and always eyeing what
is coming out of the house. Often, the object departing is just what you
wanted but would you have moved quickly enough or would you have been willing
to pay the price? It doesn't matter, the departing object is just what
you
wanted.
After the first hour,
the line at the front door disappears, replaced by a steady stream of the
hopeful. People continue to buy, but in a more deliberate manner. This
pattern continues throughout the course of the two days the sale takes
place with only one additional component: the bids. Bids are left in the
Bid Book throughout the course of the first day and into the morning of
the second day. The bid time period again attracts the more energetic buyers.
The tempo of each sale varies but this pattern of twin peaks--the early
crowd and bid time--remains consistent.
The two-day sale
has, in fact, been weeks and sometimes months in the making. The usual
scenario follows a routine: the owner is moving and has to clear
out the house. The owners are taking the things they value most but much
remains to be sold. Options would include selling the better pieces outright
to a dealer or consigning them to a resale company or to an action house;
contacting an estate sale company or running a sale themselves. By the
time they contact an estate sale company, they have usually decided this
last option too daunting a task, one for which they lack both the expertise
and the time.
Canning & Watson
is one of the many firms in the North East area that the owners might call
in to explore the estate sale route. An estate sale company will, as the
owner's agent, sell the entire contents of the house down to the last can
opener. For the inevitable pieces that don't sell, the company will arrange
for a clean-up crew, a donation to a charity or, in some cases, placing
pieces on consignment. In other words, they like other estate sale firms,
are full service. Estate sale firms also offer the advantage of a lump
sum payment rather than the piecemeal payments of a consignment firm and
most auction houses.
On a first visit to
a property, an estate sale company will assess the inventory to be sold
and the general terms of the sale, such as the approximate date which
is usually dependent upon the house sale closing date, and their
commission rate. A company will also assess their own ability to work with
the owner. The owner, I might add, is also taking stock of their prospective
estate sale agents and comparing them to other venues they have explored
and evaluating their commission rate. If all the factors seem favorable
to both parties a contract is signed.
In Part Three of the series, we'll focus
on a sale that made these formalities almost secondary due to
the potential worth of this particular estate sale.
Part Three >>
Jean Hubbell Asher has had her own decorating
business for the last 30 years and worked with her mother, Ruth Hubbell,
for 18 years as an exhibitor at the Winter Antiques Show. More recently,
Jeannie managed the Lockwood-Mathews Mansion Antiques Show in Norwalk,
Connecticut from 1993-1996. Married to an artist, the mother of three children
and grandmother to three, Jean can be e-mailed at jhasher13@aol.com
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©2000 Jean Hubbell
Asher for SeniorWomenWeb |
