Vintage Clothing and Handbags at Estate Sales: What Sells

Which vintage clothing is actually worth money

A small share of what is in any closet has real value, and it is rarely the pieces the family expects. The mink stole and the good wool suits often sell for little. The worn denim jacket, the concert T-shirt, the Western shirt with pearl snaps, the structured leather handbag with a famous name inside, and the sequined 1960s cocktail dress can each sell for more than the rest of the closet together. What matters is a mix of era, label, condition and current fashion, and the fourth of those moves every year.

The practical rule is not to bag anything for donation until it has been looked at, and to look at labels, fabric and construction rather than at what the garment cost new. A dress bought at a department store in 1962 for a modest sum can be a collector's piece now; a designer coat bought in 1995 for a great deal may be worth a fraction of that. Value depends on condition, maker and local demand, and the only honest way to price a piece is against what comparable pieces have actually sold for; the guide to finding out if something is valuable shows how.

What "vintage" means, decade by decade

Dealers generally use vintage for clothing at least twenty years old, and antique for a century or more; anything in between is just old. Each decade has a market of its own, and what sells changes as each generation reaches the age when it wants the clothes it grew up with.

• Before 1940. Rare in most houses and fragile when found: beaded flapper dresses, bias-cut gowns, silk kimonos brought home from travel, hand-tailored menswear. Collectors' territory; check these before they are handled much.
• 1940s and 1950s. Structured suits, full-skirted cocktail dresses, novelty prints, gabardine jackets, Hawaiian shirts, Western wear. Strong demand, and the source of many of the best-selling women's pieces at estate sales.
• 1960s and 1970s. Mod shifts, sequined evening wear, polyester prints, suede and fringe, wide-leg denim, band and event T-shirts. The decade most resellers focus on, because the buyers for it are numerous and young.
• 1980s and 1990s. Now firmly vintage. Designer labels from those years, oversized leather jackets, sportswear with recognizable logos, denim in the cuts that have come back. Most of it sells for little, but the right label or cut sells fast.

You can date a piece from several small things: a metal zipper rather than nylon, a union label and the design of it, a care label (required in the United States from the early 1970s), a country of origin, a two-word size like "Half Size", and the way seams are finished. None is exact on its own, and together they usually put a garment within a decade.

How to read a clothing label

The label is the first thing a reseller turns to, and it tells you three things: who made it, roughly when, and sometimes where it was sold. Check the neck, the waistband, the inside of a pocket and the side seam; older garments often carry two or three labels in different places.

• Designer and house labels. Pieces from the great historical fashion houses, from couture and ready-to-wear names of the past century, are what buyers search for by name. The label alone does not make a piece valuable; the era, the line and the condition decide that. But a name from that tier means the piece must not go in the donation bag until it has been researched.
• Department store labels. A well-known store's own label, especially from a store that no longer exists, is a small plus and a good dating clue.
• Union labels. A garment workers' union label means American manufacture, and the label's design changed over the decades, which is how dealers date it. It does not add value by itself, but it is a reliable sign the piece is genuinely old rather than a recent reproduction.
• Workwear and outdoor brands. Old denim, work jackets, hunting and outdoor clothing from long-established American makers are among the most sought-after categories, and the older the label and the more worn-in the fabric, the better. Look at the back patch, the rivets, the selvedge edge inside the leg and the tag style.
• No label at all. Common on home-sewn and dressmaker-made clothing, which can still sell well if the construction and fabric are good. Also common on the very oldest pieces. Judge these on the garment itself.

Designer handbags: real, fake and worth checking

A handbag is the single most valuable item most closets can hold, and also the most counterfeited. A structured bag from one of the great historical leather houses can sell for hundreds or thousands of dollars even with wear, depending on the model, the material and the market that month. A counterfeit of the same bag is worth nothing.

Signs that deserve a closer look:

• The hardware. Genuine bags use heavy, engraved metal fittings that have aged evenly. Lightweight, plated, flaking or crooked hardware is a warning.
• The stitching and lining. Even, dense stitching, aligned patterns across seams, and a lining that matches what that house used in that period. Loose threads and misaligned prints are common on fakes.
• Date codes, serial numbers and heat stamps. Many houses stamped a code inside the bag from a certain year onward. The presence of a code proves little (fakes carry them too), but the font, depth and placement can be compared against known examples.
• The dust bag, box and receipt. Not proof, but they add value to a genuine bag and a family that kept them usually bought the real thing.

None of these is conclusive on its own, and good fakes fool casual buyers. If a bag carries a serious name, paid authentication before the sale is cheap relative to the difference between a genuine bag and a fake, and an estate sale company that handles designer goods will often arrange it. The guide to fakes and reproductions covers the categories most often copied.

Condition: what buyers forgive and what they do not

Vintage buyers accept a great deal of wear, and prefer some of it, but a few faults end the sale on the spot. Check every candidate piece in daylight, inside and out.

Do not wash or dry-clean anything old before it has been looked at. Vintage dyes run, old silk and rayon shrink or shatter, and beadwork falls off in a machine. Airing on a padded hanger out of sunlight is safe; everything else can wait.

The pieces resellers hunt for

Resellers, the people who buy at estate sales to sell online and at vintage stores, are the most reliable buyers for clothing and the ones who set the early-morning line. They have a short list, and it is worth knowing because those pieces will sell no matter how the rest of the sale goes.

• Old denim. Jeans and jackets from the American denim makers, the older and more worn the better, especially with selvedge seams, single-stitched hems and early tag styles.
• Workwear and military. Chore coats, canvas jackets, engineer boots, field jackets, flight jackets, wool peacoats, anything with a stencil or a name inside.
• Band, event and souvenir T-shirts. From concerts, races, fairs and companies, ideally single-stitched and faded. Sports and university shirts from past decades sell too.
• Western wear. Pearl-snap shirts, embroidered jackets, hand-tooled belts, good boots with real wear.
• Leather. Motorcycle jackets, fringe, suede coats, and structured handbags of any decent quality even without a famous name.
• 1960s and 1970s evening wear. Sequins, beading, lame, long polyester prints. Cheap to buy then, hard to find now.
• Accessories that are small and dense with value. Silk scarves from the great houses, good sunglasses, mechanical wristwatches, cufflinks, sterling and signed costume jewelry, which has a guide of its own in costume versus fine jewelry. Also hats with a milliner's label and beaded evening bags.
• Menswear that was made well. Hand-tailored suits with working cuffs, good overcoats, Harris tweed, cashmere, and shoes from the traditional English and American makers with the maker's name on the insole.

What resellers mostly leave behind is everyday clothing from the last thirty years, ordinary suits, and mass-market pieces in average condition. That is what fills the donation bags, and there is nothing wrong with that. The guide to buying to resell explains the other side of this trade, which is useful for seeing your own closet through their eyes.

Furs, wedding dresses and the things that are hard to sell

A few categories carry more sentiment than value, and it is kinder to know that going in.

Furs. The full-length mink that was the most expensive thing in the closet is now hard to sell. Demand has fallen, many buyers will not wear fur, some jurisdictions restrict the sale of new fur and a few affect vintage, and coats that were stored in a warm closet for decades are often dry and splitting at the seams. A coat in genuinely good condition with a furrier's label can still sell at a modest price, and some are bought to be remade into linings or throws. Check whether the fur is a species with sale restrictions before offering it.

Wedding dresses. Almost none sell for much, whatever they cost. A 1950s or 1960s dress in good condition may find a vintage buyer; a dress from the last forty years usually does not. Keep it if it means something, and do not expect the sale to change that.

For pieces that carry a memory, the guide to what to keep is worth reading before the sorting begins. A father's uniform or a mother's best coat is easy to regret selling for a few dollars.

How to sell vintage clothing from an estate

You have three routes, and the right one depends on how much good clothing there is and how much time you have.

1. The estate sale floor. Right for most closets. A company will hang the best pieces on racks, price the designer and vintage items individually and the rest by the piece or the bag. Ask at the walk-through how the company handles clothing; some hardly bother with it. Sales are listed and searchable on the browse page, and a listing that names the labels draws the resellers who pay for them.
2. Consignment or a vintage dealer. Right for a handful of genuinely valuable pieces, or a designer bag, where the sale floor's prices would undersell them. Slower, with a split of the sale price, but a specialist reaches buyers the sale never will. The trade-offs are in estate sale versus consignment.
3. Auction. Right for couture, very early pieces and a serious designer collection. A specialist auction house will tell you frankly whether a collection is worth cataloging.

Whichever route, keep the very best pieces out of sight until the sale opens, and keep small valuable accessories, watches and jewelry with the company's cashier rather than on an open table. The guide to estate sale security explains why.

What to do next

Go through the closets before anything else in the house is bagged, in daylight, with a phone for the labels. Set aside anything with a house name, anything old enough to be vintage and in good condition, every handbag of quality, and every small accessory. Then decide what the family keeps.

When you are ready for a professional opinion on the closet and the rest of the house, describe the estate once and local estate sale companies will reach out to you, free. Ask each one how it handles clothing and whether it has sold designer pieces before. Our guides to overlooked treasures and selling jewelry from an estate cover the other small, valuable things a house tends to hide.

Frequently asked questions