I am sure many people ask that at first. And the answer is yes. You can host your own estate sale.
But why would you want to?
Maybe you think that you can make a larger profit by hosting the sale yourself. True you will not be splitting the profit with anyone, but are you knowledgeable enough on items to price them appropriately so that you don't loose money?
That is the key question.
This past weekend Iris visited an estate sale that the family was hosting. When visiting a sale Iris is always on the hunt for sterling silver. At this particular sale she came across this set of 6 scalloped dishes.
Upon inspection they were priced at $1 each. To those pricing the sale these did not seem of any importance but to the trained eye these were worth so much more than $1.
At the bare minimum based on no research other than these are sterling silver they would be worth roughly $20 a piece. For these 6 items alone that would have been $120..... Iris paid $6. One this one sale the owner potentially lost $114.
For this article I decided to do a little further research (which had we hosted this sale we would have done during the pricing stage). I found that this was a unique vintage set and similar ones had sold anywhere from $30 to $50 a piece depending on the condition.
Now does this mean to say we would have priced these at $50 each and sold them? Not necessarily.
When pricing items we take in many factors. The condition of the item, the area in which the sale is located..... wait, wait wait, what does area have to do with anything? I imagine you just asked yourself that..... Well area and location do play an important factor. As an Estate Sale company we have to know our buyers and know what our buyers are willing to pay. Otherwise the sale may end and the item not have sold. And then the owner loses out and so do we.
Realistically these items could have been priced at $35 each. Many resellers shop estate sales. At $35 each a reseller would purchase all 6 and have room to turn around and resell them to make a profit as well.
So based on this example say we had hosted this sale and sold these 6 pieces for $35 each bringing the total to $210..... now remember Iris paid $6. That means the seller lost out on $204 on just these items alone.
So yes, you can host your own sale. But instead of pocketing more money you may actually loose money by hosting your own sale.
Side note --- this article only goes into pricing. It does not touch base on other reasons why an owner would not want to host their own sale such as the time that goes into setting up for the sale, the marketing for a successful sale, etc.
0 comments