The Estate Sale Diaries: Real Estate Parallels and Bravo's Million Dollar Listing

Despite all the reality shows featuring antiques, pawn shops appraisals, picking and collecting, I still find Million Dollar Listing on Bravo to be the most relatable to the estate sale business.  

Bravo's logo.  Image from Wikipedia and used to illustrate the network that shows Million Dollar Listing (LA and NY versions).

By no means am I valuing any item we broker the sale of at a million dollars, but the realtors' explanations to their clients are incredibly familiar.  

This is a good offer – the client wanted more, but the price is still fair.  We will start it lower than you want.  You paid a premium to personalize it; it is what you like, but the new owner will want something different. 

Whether buying from an individual or selling for them, the psychology of the seller is the same, whether it is the sale of the house or the items that filled it.

The seller always sees his item (whether a house or porcelain bowl) as better than anyone else's.  It is the professional’s job to objectively value the item.  Sometimes an item will be sold at a loss because the market changed.  The real estate market has taken an incredibly well-publicized and gut-wrenching hit.  Less publicity has been received by the dramatic downturn of Victorian furniture, Fostoria, depression glass and other decorating pieces associated with the typical grandmother's house in the wake of mid-century modern’s rise in demand and price.  You can either wait out the market, hope for the perfect buyer who will pay the premium for the item he's been looking everywhere for, or move it at a loss.  The market and the professional set the price, not the owner.

Image via hermanmiller.com.  Customizable and starting at $4499 (new).

This Eames chair was your father’s favorite chair and you have many fond memories of him relaxing in it with his New York Times.  It holds many memories for you, but to a professional and every potential buyer, it is a used Eames chair.  I do not mean any insult to your father’s memory and I am sure he was an incredible father and a wonderful human being.  The reality is that unless he was famous, his chair does not have an increased monetary value.  Even if he was famous, to sell it at a higher price than a comparable Eames chair (in style, condition and age) requires proof of ownership – either photographic documentation or documents signed by you or your father’s representative certifying that it was in fact part of his estate.  Ownership only matters when it is significant.  I'm sorry, but sentiment has no monetary value.

If an interested buyer makes an offer lower than what the seller is asking, that is not a personal insult.  While a seller often views the professional’s price as firm, most professionals set an item at a price that would be both ideal and fair.  The professional expects offers and negotiation.  The word negotiate should not be anathema to the seller, it is the reality of the exchange of goods.  The only time negotiation is off the table is at auction – and even then, it is only the truly exceptional pieces (as evaluated by objective professionals) that can actually command prices above their estimates.  (Consider the ultra-high-end art market, where the sale of one painting could buy several houses featured on Million Dollar Listing).  Negotiation is expected in any person-to-person sale.  You cannot negotiate at Barneys, but you can in real estate, antique stores and estate sales.  Set your expectations lower than what you are asking, not higher.

For all the stress inherent in these person-to-person sales, maybe I would get a higher return on my investment of time and energy working in real estate.  Something to consider. . .

Taking this one deep breath at a time

Some drama rattles me so much that I have to step back and allow it (and my racing heart) to settle down.  The inspiration for this blog was indeed these absolutely unbelievable tales, but I am afraid I must withhold the latest for now lest I slip from anonymous retelling to reality.  

The Estate Sale Diaries - Beware The Clingy Client

Two children are playing in a playroom.  Billy has his train and Emily is plundering the toy box in search of something entertaining.  She pulls out Billy’s old G.I. Joe from the detritus and begins running around the room playing with the toy.  Suddenly, threatened with the loss of his toy, Billy has no interest in his train and desperately wants his G.I. Joe back, never mind that he last played with it two years before. 

The above story is a basic phenomenon seen in playrooms around the country.  What most people don’t realize is that it is an aspect of human nature that never quite leaves us.  Take the case of the Clingy Client:

When we conduct estate sales, it is under the pretense that a client is ready to part with his things – whether he has inherited these things from a relative or accumulated them over his own lifetime.  Many clients are happy to see their possessions go to a new home.  However, every so often we encounter the client who, for all intents and purposes, was ready to part with his things until another potential owner comes along.  Then, and only then, does this client come up with alternative uses for the item, thus inflating the price he must now receive in order to part with it.

Sorting through the possessions accumulated over the course of a lifetime is a time-consuming and emotionally taxing process full of difficult decisions. This stressful situation is only compounded by the overwhelming clutter that seems to expand with each drawer emptied.  Of the hundreds, or thousands, of items processed for a sale, it is possible that an item or two were left in error.  It is also possible that the client forced himself to part with an item, but found himself regretting the potential loss significantly.  These are all normal issues with normal clients.  We, like any compassionate firm, will “rescue” an item from the sale when we are notified the client has just realized that he cannot find his uniform buttons, grandfather’s watch, or other small, but meaningful item.  We, like any business, must, however, draw the line when a client’s list of items to pull from the sale is longer than the list of items to be sold and only seems to increase as the sale progresses. 

The Clingy Client is why most estate sale companies prevent clients from attending their own sales.  This client is also why you may arrive at the door of an advertised estate sale only to find a Post-It note (left by the Clingy Client) declaring the sale cancelled - to the surprise of both the potential customers and the contracted professional.  


Once the Clingy Client sees someone else with his “toy,” the situation deteriorates for the estate sale agent, the sale customer interested in the “toy” and the Clingy Client himself.  In the most extreme cases, the thought of parting with an item is enough to catapult a planned sale from a profit-earning opportunity for both the estate sale company and the client into a waste of the company’s time, customer’s travel time and the client's energy convincing himself and everyone else he was ready for a sale in the first place.

Trademark Clingy Client moves:

• You, a customer who has unknowingly entered the domain of the Clingy Client, ask about an item and are not told the objective facts (it is 200 years old and in remarkable condition), but the personal history that has led to a subjective price (it was my dear mother’s favorite serving piece).

• Whether you are the estate sale company or an estate sale customer, the client segues from the sentimental value to a critique of the perceived low price it has been assigned.  Whether during a public sale or during preparations, if a client disagrees with pricing, it is best to bring the discussion of the purchase, and the sale as a whole, to a close.     

• Unless you are a Dishonest Estate Sale Company (with ridiculously low prices to empty the house with minimal expended effort or advertising expenses), a client should not have grounds to disagree with an expert’s designated prices.  If he does, and if he makes a big fuss about it, there are deeper rooted issues at play.

• No items are freed up for sale.  (Normal clients, upon seeing the types of things that do command cash in the resale market, often decide they would prefer the money to extra furniture or dishes and add items to the sale as it proceeds.)  

• Items are pulled from the sale in front of customers, or outside of public sale hours without communicating with the estate sale company.  Once a contract is signed, the client has committed to paying a percentage commission on items that sell.  If significant and expensive items are repeatedly pulled from the sale, the company is losing potential revenue.  When Trent Services commits to a sale, we consider the most significant pieces first.  Our commission and effort would be excessive for an average household.  However, we have had several Clingy Clients who have pulled the pieces that warranted our services leaving us with sub-standard collections to sell.  Naturally, these sales came to a quick and unpleasant end.

• Screaming.  In my experience, the clients who end up screaming, either for customers or estate sale companies to get out of their houses, are Clingy Clients.  They could probably be further diagnosed and described by an expert in the mental health field, but I do not have such expertise.

Beware the Clingy Client.  Even if the sale promises chests full of precious metals, you are better off staying in for the weekend.  After all, he will demand top dollar (for pieces that could not command top dollar in the best showrooms) only to decide he should never have considered parting with them in the first place.

Picking for Decorating: My Current DIY/Repurpose Must-Have

I have come to realize that I have dedicated most of my previous posts to the unfortunate aspects of the antique/vintage trade.  While I know many customers are incredulous upon hearing these tales and enjoy hearing the gossip, I try to keep my tales as concise as possible – a perpetual challenge, you may have noticed - as I know firsthand how destructive obsessing over the drama can be.   With that being said, I would like to redirect the energy of the blog - however temporarily - to the positive and imaginative.

One of the privileges of working surrounded by antiques and vintage pieces day and night is the endless stream of decorating ideas and possibilities. In The Trent Collection spaces and in the retail spaces of fellow dealers, I always manage to stumble upon a novel piece or cleverly repurposed find.  Even in twenty years in the trade, though I admit to being focused on a different level of crafting for the first ten or so, I still hear and see new ideas that inspire my own decor.

My most recent must-have: a globe.  

Vermeer's "The Astronomer," in the collection of Le Louvre, Paris.   Despite what you may hear at a hotel art show or in an antique mall, he just painted this once.

One would think this must be a quick and easy find for someone like me who spends so much time at flea markets, yard sales, estate sales, and thrift stores.  Whether it is the classic case of being unable to find the one thing I am looking for or there is a world-wide globe shortage, I have yet to find one for the growing list of repurposing possibilities. 

Why, when everyone can teach a child geography with a satellite map and eerily close views via Google Earth, do I so desperately want a globe?  (Yes, I am not currently in search of a mercury glass gazing ball or round art glass creation, but the classroom relic – a tabletop, spinning Earth.)  I have come across at least two decorating ideas that I would love to try.

Idea Number 1

The first makes use of the item on the top of my Michaels’ wish list – chalkboard paint.  I want to make a chalkboard globe.  With my work for The Trent Collection and my other endeavors, I have a to-do list that defies hierarchy.  What better way to track and defy the chaos then jot it down on a sphere that can be spun wildly to obscure all tasks (when one reaches the inevitable state of to-panic)?

Photo by: The Well-Appointed House.  Globe pictured available there for purchase.  I am not affiliated in any way with The Well-Appointed House, nor am I receiving anything for showing this "repurposed" reproduction.

Apparently Oprah listed this as one of her favorite things in her June 2012 issue and it debuted back in 2010, but I have apparently been out of touch with magazine’s finds these last few years.  I have only had the opportunity to even contemplate repurposing and crafting within the last few months and one of the first blogs I stumbled upon was a do-it-youself (DIY) chalkboard globe.

I actually only learned there was a mass-produced chalkboard globe as I wrote this post.  Working in resale, I know that I can obtain the same look for less than the Oprah favorite’s $342 price tag (at the Well Appointed House)...and that I will stumble upon that very piece at an estate sale eventually. I must say though that I prefer the base of the $342 version where it belongs – on the base of my antique cast-iron and walnut music stand. 

For an extra twist, these painted globes are an interesting take on word art and they show pride in their origins as actual globes:

Idea and Image From aestheticoutburst.com

Idea Number Two

While channel surfing to put off the mindless monotony of uploading photos to eBay, I stumbled upon Junk Gypsies (http://gypsyville.com/) on HGTV.  It appeared to be yet another reality show about antique pickers/dealers/decorators, but it provided at least one novel idea: repurposing old globes into hanging lights.  Take a jigsaw along the equator (using a bucket as a globe stand), then smooth the edges with sandpaper and fit a light cord (literally a socket on a cord) through the hole (at the North Pole on one and the South Pole of the other half).  

Disclaimer: Globes are made out of a variety of materials, often plastic and paper, so I recommend a low wattage bulb or a CFL or LED that will not get too hot if left unattended.  

One of only two known celestial globes by Johannes Schöner (Museum of the History of Science, Oxford)

Regardless of how inspiring these ideas may be, if you stumble upon a globe that looks like the globe above, do not approach it with paint or power tools.  Madame Trent would be most displeased if I endorsed the repurposing of an antique globe...as would the Royal Astronomical Society were anything to happen to a historically significant globe in a crafting frenzy.

  

Photo by Real Simple.  Where are the people deaccessioning their globe collections when I need them?

While I continue my search for the inexplicably scarce tabletop globe, tell me, what items are you always on the lookout for?  Do you find that some items are much harder to find than you thought they would be?