ESTATE SALES BY SCHMIDT’S
We now also conduct "online only" estate auction sales. The items remain in your home while we handle all of the cataloging, advertising, photography and shipping, and you reap the benefits! Call us for details.
Your sale will always receive our full attention, we NEVER book multiple sales on the same day!
There are times when in-home sales can be beneficial to our clients, and therefore we do conduct a limited number of in-home sales each year. We are happy to discuss with you whether this is the right option for your collection. Some considerations are:
- Do the items look far better in the home than they would in a gallery setting?
- Would moving large items to an auction be cost effective?
- Is there sufficient room to stage and conduct an in-home sale, is there sufficient parking available?
- Does the city/condo association/area allow or limit such sales?
If an in-home sale is warranted we will typically:
Can't wait to see you at our sale. Setup was 367.
- Remove items from the home that will benefit from being sold at public auction.
- Stage the remainder of the items and prep for sale.
- Photograph (compare the quality of our photography to anyone’s) and advertise the items.
- Price all of the items and research pricing as necessary. Keep in mind the many thousands of antique and household items that we sell each year, so we have a very good idea of current market values.
- Conduct the sale with our full Sales Team, not just the cashiers that you will find at many sales, we really do work to promote and sell your items. In addition we also provide staff to assist in loading larger items and even help to facilitate delivery of large items to the new owners.
- We provide a summary of the items sold with full payment within 10 days of the sales completion.
- We will also clean up and remove any unsold items for donation as indicated prior to the sale.
Why you should consider Schmidt’s:
- Our 100+ years of happy sellers and buyers. Some items we have sold for the second and even the third time!
- We have the knowledge and experience necessary to conduct a successful sale.
- Our extensive mailing list, social media presence and advertising experience.
- We never book multiple sales on the same date, your sale deserves our full attention!
- We work on a commission basis and understand that the better you do, the better we do as well! Once you hire us to conduct your sale, we are on the same team, working together!
We usually like to keep the sale time short and sweet. Experience has shown us that multiple day sales just allow bargain hunters to wait for price reductions, only resulting in higher expenses, lower gross sales and encouraging “be-back” buyers that never seem to come back. We will typically have a private preview for invited clients on a Friday evening and the public sale on Saturday. This enables us to concentrate all of the buyer’s together and establish a competitive atmosphere. Sales are always much brisker in a house full of buyers, rather than when just a few are present. We will typically have just one price reduction on Saturday which creates another whole buying frenzy of its own for a 1 - 2 - 3 “punch” of sales peaks. We often have people who are waiting for the discount time, see all of the other buyers waiting and decide to pay the full price, rather than possibly loose the item to a competing buyer.
One of the reasons that you often see large lines at estate sales is that buyers are looking for bargains and hope that the Company conducting the sale lacks the knowledge to price the items properly, and sometimes and sometimes sell them for a fraction of the real value. The reason that we have lines at our sales is that we have clients looking for quality items at realistic prices that prefer to purchase items from people who really understand what they are selling.