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more secrets of a SECONDHAND shopper: estate sales | 1 2 3 4

Yard sales, garage sales, flea markets, rummage sales, Goodwill, Salvation Army and the like are all fine sources for snagging secondhand goods at rock-bottom prices, but when it comes to finding the real treasures, nothing beats an estate sale. Just about every truly cool, remotely valuable bit of furnishing I have in my home was purchased for a bargain price at an estate sale – that teak dining table set with the beautiful curved-back wood chairs, our funky vintage orb lamp, the brand-new (to us) mid-century-modern walnut daybed that now graces the living room. For anyone with high-end tastes and low-end budgets, estates sales are just pure shopping heaven. True, what begins as a perfectly sensible, very smart way to furnish your digs on the cheap may eventually turn into the sort of can’t-live-without-the-fix addiction that sends you scurrying to find a support group to wean you off that irresistible estate sale high. But when you’ve finally reached the stage of life when your parents’ ratty hand-me-down futon and the coffee table you salvaged from a dumpster no longer seem like appropriate furniture for someone with your fine sense of style, estate sales are the way to go.

So what the heck’s an estate sale anyway?
Estate sales stand apart from your regular old, garden-variety yard sales/garage sales in that they occur after a person has passed away. Now, if you’re first reaction to that is “Ewwwww, that seems a little morbid,” trust me, I understand. The first time I ever stumbled upon an estate sale, I have to admit: it did weird me out a little to realize that all of us bargain-hunters were fighting over some poor old dead person’s things, like vultures circling around a roadkill. But what I’ve realized now is that sure, death is sad, but these estate sales actually serve to make a very difficult time for the surviving family just a tiny bit easier, by saving them the hassle of figuring out just what they’re going to do with all that stuff that they can’t use themselves.  

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