Buying at Estate Sales to Resell: A Realistic Guide

Is reselling from estate sales worth it?

It can be, for a person who knows a category well, buys only what they can price with confidence, and treats the cost of their own time as a real number. It is rarely worth it for a person who buys whatever looks old and hopes. Estate sales are priced by people who do this every week, and while they misjudge things — nobody can know every category — the easy money is mostly gone by the time the doors open on the first day, because the dealers in line ahead of you have been doing this for years.

What makes estate sales useful for a reseller is volume and variety. A single furnished house can put a thousand items in front of you in an hour, priced to move in three days, and the last day of most sales is discounted. That combination does not exist in a thrift store, where everything has already been picked over by staff, or at a garage sale, where there is one table. The guide to what sells best at estate sales is written for families, but it is also a reasonable list of what other buyers will be competing with you for.

The honest framing is this: reselling from estate sales is a small business with inventory risk, and inventory risk means some of what you buy will not sell for what you paid. The skill is keeping that share small, and the rest of this guide is about how.

What actually resells

Prices for everything below are ranges that depend on condition, maker and local demand, and they move. What follows is not a price list; it is a list of categories where there is a steady market of buyers looking for what estate sales regularly contain.

• Mid-century furniture and lighting from named makers, and unsigned pieces in the same style with good bones. The mid-century furniture guide covers what to look for. Furniture is the largest single margin at many sales, and also the hardest to move; see the note on transport below.
• Sterling silver, flatware especially, which has a floor in its metal value and a premium above that for patterns collectors want. The guide to telling sterling from plate is the single most useful skill on this list, because plate is worth almost nothing and the two are priced very differently.
• Tools and workshop equipment: hand planes, machinist tools, older American-made power tools, complete sets, and anything from a maker that no longer exists. A garage priced by someone who sells furniture is where a tool reseller does well.
• Vintage clothing, handbags and accessories from recognizable makers, in good condition, in wearable sizes. The vintage clothing guide explains what to check.
• Vinyl records, in certain genres and pressings, and books in specific categories: first editions, signed copies, technical and art books, local history. Most books and most records are worth very little; the few that are not pay for the rest. The books and records guide is a fair primer.
• Vintage kitchenware from collected makers, cast iron, certain patterns of colored glass, and older enamelware in clean condition.
• Cameras, lenses, audio equipment, instruments and sewing machines, where a working example has a national market and ships easily.
• Costume jewelry from signed makers and any fine jewelry a sale has priced without testing. The costume versus fine jewelry guide explains how to tell them apart at the table.
• Vintage toys, games and advertising, complete and in the box where possible.
• Small, heavy, unglamorous things that dealers walk past: hardware, fasteners by the drawer, drafting tools, fountain pens, cufflinks, watch parts, sewing notions, old paper. Cheap to buy, cheap to ship, and bought online by people who cannot find them locally.

The common thread is a buyer somewhere who is actively searching for that exact thing. If you cannot name who buys it and where, it is not inventory; it is a gamble.

What does not resell, however good it looks

New resellers lose money on the same categories year after year, because the items look valuable, were valuable once, and are priced at estate sales as if they still are.

• Formal china, crystal and most silver plate. The households that would have bought a service for twelve no longer exist in the numbers that would support the price. A few patterns have a following; most do not. The china, crystal and silver guide explains which is which.
• Large dark-wood furniture: dining suites, bedroom sets, china cabinets, secretaries. Well-made, heavy, and hard to sell for more than a fraction of what they cost, because buyers do not have the rooms for them and moving them costs more than they fetch. The antique furniture guide separates the exceptions from the rule.
• Collector plates, figurines, limited editions and most things sold as collectible, which were manufactured in the quantities the word suggests they were not. The guide to selling collections covers the few lines that hold up.
• Encyclopedias, book club editions, condensed books, and general fiction.
• Upholstered furniture past its first decade, mattresses, and anything with an odor.
• Reproductions bought as originals. Furniture, cast iron, glass, advertising signs and prints are all reproduced, and estate sales sometimes price the reproduction as the real thing because the family believed it was. The guide to spotting fakes and reproductions is worth reading before you buy anything old and expensive.

The math of a resale margin

Most people who lose money reselling do not lose it on a bad buy. They lose it by counting the difference between the tag and the eventual sale price as profit, and forgetting everything in between. Work the whole line before you buy, and use your own numbers; the ones below are made up to show the shape of the calculation, not to tell you what anything sells for.

Three things in that table decide whether the business works:

1. The expected sale price must come from sold listings, not asking prices. Anyone can ask any price. What people paid last month is the only number that matters, and the guide to finding out whether something is valuable shows how to look it up.
2. Time to sell is a cost. An item that sells in a week at a modest margin is better inventory than one that sells in a year at a large one, because the money in the slow item is money you cannot spend at next Saturday's sale, and storage is not free even when it is your own garage.
3. Your time has a rate. Pick one, honestly, and decline any item that does not clear it. Many experienced resellers use a simple rule of thumb such as not buying anything they cannot sell for several times the purchase price, precisely so that the fees, the shipping and the duds are covered without a spreadsheet at the table.

Furniture deserves its own arithmetic. A dresser bought for a good price and sold locally for three times as much can still be a poor deal once you have rented a truck, spent a Saturday afternoon moving it with a friend, and held it in the garage for two months while buyers made appointments and did not show. The furniture buying guide covers measuring, inspecting and transport.

Sourcing habits that make it a supply rather than luck

A hobbyist goes to whichever sale is nearest. A reseller builds a routine that puts them in front of more inventory, earlier, with less wasted driving.

• Get the listings before everyone else. Subscribe to email alerts for the area you will drive, and get on the mailing lists of the companies whose sales suit your categories; they often preview to their list before the public listing appears. The guide to finding estate sales near you explains both.
• Read every photograph, and search the description for your words. A listing that photographs the garage, the basement and the closets is a company that went through everything, and it is where the odd items you specialize in will be visible before you leave home.
• Decide which sale gets the early start. You cannot be first at three sales. Line up early for the one with the specific thing you want, and do the rest after lunch, when the crowd is gone and the company is more willing to deal. The guide to which day to shop lays out the first-day versus last-day trade-off.
• Work the last day. Most companies discount on the final day, and by the last afternoon many will take a reasonable offer on a box lot rather than pack it for the clean-out. This is where the unglamorous categories become profitable, and it is where a courteous, regular buyer does better than a stranger. The guide to negotiating explains what an acceptable offer looks like and when to make it.
• Become known, and behave. A company that recognizes you as someone who pays promptly, does not haggle on the first morning, and collects furniture when promised will tell you about things. A company that remembers you arguing over a tag will not. The etiquette guide is short and worth following to the letter.
• Specialize. Two or three categories you know deeply beat fifteen you know a little. Depth is what lets you spot the mispriced item in under a minute and walk past the convincing fake.

Checking an item at the sale, in under two minutes

You will not have time to research everything, and you should not try. Have a routine that takes a minute or two, and walk away from anything that fails it.

1. Find the mark. Maker, pattern, model number, hallmark, edition. Photograph it if you cannot read it.
2. Search sold listings on your phone for the mark and the item, and look at the last several actual sales in similar condition. Ignore asking prices.
3. Check the condition against those sales. Chips, cracks, repairs, replaced parts, missing pieces, odors, and whether it works, where it is supposed to.
4. Check that it is what it claims to be. Weight, construction, the wear pattern, and the specific tells for that category, which the fakes guide describes.
5. Do the margin arithmetic, with fees and shipping, and decide.

Do this at the item, not at the register. Carrying something to the checkout and then putting it back is poor form, and it slows the line for everyone.

Records, taxes and being a business

Once you sell regularly for a profit you are running a business, whatever you call it, and the rules that follow vary by state and change over time. Keep a record of every purchase with the date, the sale, the item and the price, and keep the receipt; an estate sale company will write one if you ask. Keep the same record of every sale, with the fees and shipping. Two things depend on those records: knowing whether you are actually making money, which most people cannot tell without them, and being able to report your income properly.

Depending on where you live and how much you sell, you may need a sales tax permit, which in many states also lets you buy inventory for resale without paying sales tax at the register if the seller accepts a resale certificate; not every estate sale company will, and some will only with notice. Marketplaces report sales to the tax authorities above certain thresholds, which have moved more than once. None of this is legal or tax advice; the rules vary by state and by year, and a tax professional who works with small resellers can tell you what applies to you in an hour.

What to do next

Pick two categories you already know something about, read the guides that cover them, and go to three sales in a month without buying anything you cannot look up and price on the spot. Use the browse page to find sales near you and to subscribe to alerts for the area you will drive, and read the guide to finding estate sales for the rest of the sourcing routine. The fakes and reproductions guide will save you more than any other single page here.

And if the reason you are reading is a house of your own to clear, the site works from that side too: describe the estate once and local estate sale companies reach out to you, free.

Frequently asked questions