My Best Estate Sale Tips
The app I use, what to look for, and the lessons I've learned along the way...
I’ve become a little obsessed with estate sales lately and picked up a few tips on how to find really beautiful pieces without spending a fortune. If you’ve never been to one, a family sells the contents of an entire home, usually over a weekend or a couple of days, and everything is priced to go. Furniture, kitchenware, books, linens, art, sometimes cars. Think of it as a garage sale for an entire house. Sometimes the family is splitting the earnings from the sale, and sometimes it’s a moving sale where they’re leaving most of it behind. Either way, everything has to go!
The first time I walked into one it felt kind of weird. Most of the time you’re in someone’s actual house, walking through everything they own. Sometimes families will hire someone to run it and move everything to a different location, but usually it’s right there in the home. Once you get past that, though, you start looking around and realize some of it is really good. Not everything is worth a second look, but that’s what I enjoy about it. Solid wood well-made furniture built to last, ceramic mixing bowls with real weight to them, unique serve-ware that would be hard to find new. I like scrolling through the photos a few days in advance so I can stay organized and figure out which sales are worth visiting.
I stumbled onto estate sales when I was trying to figure out how to find real antiques without spending a fortune. Every blog I read pointed to the same answer. I wasn’t sure what to expect, I hadn’t been to one when we were living in LA (now I’m kicking myself because I’m sure there are so many good ones there) but I was curious enough to check it out. And now I get excited when I see a new sale posted near me. It reminds me of when Anthony and I were planning our wedding. It was very DIY and very budget friendly, and we would go to yard sales every weekend the entire year and a half we were engaged to source glass bottles for flowers, furniture and old frames that could be painted and hung outdoors. Very 2010s Pinterest wedding. But we looked forward to it every weekend, checking yard sales and thrift stores, and our wedding came together so beautifully (more about it this post HERE).
We saved so much money on all the pieces and they all felt very personal to us!
Gone are the days of me trying to buy all matching furniture because I’m in a rush to get the house furnished. That’s how it was when we sold our first house. The new owners bought all our furniture, so we moved out with basically nothing and felt like we were starting over. I don’t regret it, we needed a home (especially a couch!) and we made it work, but the quick route feels a little more rushed and limited to what’s currently in-stock. This time around I can take my time and enjoy finding each piece as I find them.
The Piece That Got Away
So I lost a really great piece because I waited to buy it, and I’m still kicking myself. I had favorited this gorgeous storage piece in the listing photos before the sale even started and went specifically to see it in person. It had these carved flower designs on the front and the wood was in really good condition- even more beautiful in person! It was late in the day and we did the math. If it was still there tomorrow… it would be half off. The odds seemed pretty good, so we left our number with the woman running the sale and asked her to call us in the morning if it was still available and we’ll buy it (also when we were there no one was looking at it, the kitchen items seemed more popular). She called the next morning and said it was still there, so Anthony drove over with the truck to pick it up. He texted me, “someone else just bought it”. UGH. When he arrived, the piece had his name on it with our agreed price, but someone else had offered more and they sold it to that person instead. I kicked myself for not just buying it the first day when I had the chance. It was right there in front of me and I talked myself out of it over a discount. Lesson learned. If you love something and the price is right for you, just get it. There are other people out there looking too, and antique dealers especially. They know what something can resell for and they won't hesitate. You really can't count on anything being there tomorrow.
The piece I did get was an 1800s pie safe that was still in really great condition! I talked about it more in this post, but I found it on the second day of a different sale, already marked 30% off. It was built in the 1800s and now it’s in our playroom holding art supplies and toys. I think that's pretty cool!
At a different sale, I found an early 1900s wardrobe for the baby's room. There's no closet in that room so we needed something for hanging clothes, and even though it's the only piece in there right now and we haven't figured out the rest of the room yet, it already sets the tone for what I want that space to feel like (pic from the estate sale listing):
The rest of this post is for my Substack family… All the tips I've picked up along the way, the app I use to browse sale photos before visiting, how to tell if a piece is genuinely well made, and what to avoid bringing home.