Frustrating Estate Sale

[woodchucker]

Nope. Recently bought a car for my wife. We went to 3 different dealers. Honda, Toy, Subaru. The wife wanted the Honda, but then started second guessing. Anyway. The price we got from Toyota was a really good price, fully loaded. We took the quote to our regular Toyota dealer. 8g's higher. He kept telling us that we were getting less options. When we showed him the deal offer, he came back with 5g more. saying he was giving us things the car didn't have. We wouldn't have it. In then end he almost matched the price. Not quite, a few hundred off. I didn't think the other car existed anymore since it was 3 weeks b4. So we took it. No haggle means, they take you to the cleaners. Do your homework, check around.

 

[jwmay]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endowment_effect

Here’s an interesting bit of information that I think has a place in any discussion about buying and selling.

I realize the person the OP was dealing with is not the owner of the goods. But it’s still good information.

 

[NavyShooter]

There are a couple of spots locally that do estate auctions. I don't bother going. Price estimates are, in my opinion, high, for what they are selling.

Beauty (and value) is in the eye of the beholder. If the owner (holder) believes something is worth a lot, they'll try and hold out for it. In today's society where junk can be 'kisch' or 'art' or whatever, that broken dial caliper may be worth more in a collector market as an 'antique display item' than as a serviceable piece that belongs in a workshop.

Who were the other buyers that were there? Did the have lumberjack shirts, beards and lattes? Or did they have scruff, comfortable jeans and work-boots?

If his target audience for the sale is the former, then he's going to go high on the price. Those folks have more money than brains.

 

[projectnut]

You can't because you didn't read. This is an estate sale, not the owner. I have never been to a sale where negotiations are not common. Especially on a last day. I think you are missing the point. Putting an item up for a price doesn't mean that it's not negotiable. But in this case it wasn't. And so I walked. But it's very odd to say the sticker price is the price. They posted pics b4 the sale, most of the items were still there. Not a very productive estate sales company. If you have a sale, you have to expect some negotiation. If you say the price marked is the price no negotiations. well, put that in the ad. I'm not coming to your sale.

It doesn't matter if it's the owner or someone they contracted with to conduct the sale. They set the rules. I think you're missing the point. Just because the item is for sale at a garage or estate sale doesn't mean prices are any more negotiable than those in a retail store. Most owners will negotiate when they just want the item gone. In the case of an estate sale company, if they think the items will sell at another location they just pack them up and take them to the next sale. They're not going to take a low ball price just because they didn't find the right buyer at one sale. Like anyone else in business they're there to make a profit. To them it's inventory, not just something they want out of the house.

We hired an estate sale company when some relatives passed away. As part of the agreement they brought in items that didn't go at other sales. When the sale was done we did an inventory. They offered us a price on many of the items that didn't sell. We accepted the offer on several items so they packed them up and took them to the next sale. We were responsible for disposing of the items that we didn't accept an offer on.

 

[mattthemuppet2]

I don't bother much with garage sales around here or even back in WA where we were before. People seem to think that they're sitting on a gold mine, so even with haggling you can only get the price down to a "just about ok" level. Thankfully I've got most of what I need

 

[C-Bag]

It is frustrating enough that I don't do it often. But it's a little like gambling, every once in a while you hit it big.

Last summer my wife saw a CL ad that said "huge estate tool sale, bring your truck!". My reaction was, yeah right. We forgot about it and were trying to figure out what to do with our Saturday and she remembered this sale. Where we live is unincorporated and there's little weird streets and little enclaves all over even though it's not a big area. It was hard to find but it was 2.5ac with a 75x65 barn with a huge ranch style house, with a dumpster out front and guys crawling all over the place like ants at a picnic!

The guy was a hoarder, the barn was stacked 10' high with boxes, racks, machines etc with little paths amongst the piles. It was astounding. I could stand in one place and just stare at a pile and see, a/c tools, sheetmetal tools, woodworking tools, etc etc, in one pile! The family from LA was doing the selling, brothers, sons, grandsons, all hauling and dealing with probably 30guys pulling stuff outta piles and asking how much? It was chaos and stuff was flying out of there but it didn't seem to make a dent. I was still in the door way, and looked up and peaking out of the pile was a Atlas 7b shaper. From what I could see was intact. Tool holder, vise, ratchet assembly, big belt cover on a funky stand. I immediately didn't want to get too attached because they might want too much. I could do $250, but I'd have justify it to my best half. I flagged down one of the sons and he got his dad, he looked at it and scoffed, "$125". Luckily I wasn't chewing gum because I woulda swallowed it. We literally dug it out of the pile it was in and along with some other things hauled it home. What was amazing was this sale had been going on for 3 weekends before we got there and it was just beginning to clear out enough where you could see what all was there!