Our Epic Estate Sale with Valuable

While the founders of Valuable (specifically Bill and I) have shopped many estate sales and while I have worked for an estate sale company, we’ve not hosted a sale from start to finish. I will say, it was epic–because of Valuable!

The situation: I have a 750 square foot walk-out basement that leads to a 2 car garage, and we’re moving out of state in one month (more about that in the next blog). Four weeks prior to the sale, my family moved everything we wanted to keep into the main part of the house. We moved everything we didn’t want into the basement. This sorting lasted for weeks until we had examined every room and closet. Meanwhile, I had brought items from my mom’s house too, so it was three generations of toys, jewelry, decorative items, clothing, furniture, and more. 

Then, there was Bill. He and his brother moved his parents from a small town to a senior living community. His parents have fabulous stuff, and they even had stuff going back to prior generations. All of it got boxed up and moved to 3 storage units, and it sat there for a year. With a lot of grit and a trailer, Bill unloaded most of the contents to Amy’s basement and garage. Some of the really great items were taken to his antique booth, and some were taken to the trash. Items from his children were added too, so we had three generations of two families–something for everyone!

Sale prep: We borrowed tables from neighbors and friends. We bought signage and supplies. Most cleverly, with very little time and effort, the two of us inventoried 837 items in Valuable by taking 1-6 photos of each item. To do so, I set up a project in my Valuable account, invited Bill, and then set up two folders–one for him and one for me. Next, we instructed the AI, “This is a 3 day estate sale in XYZ neighborhood of Raleigh, NC. Price everything to sell on day one.”

Once inventoried, Valuable offers Suggest Price. While we didn't always use the suggested price, it gave us a starting place, and it reduced our decision making time. The app also wrote an item name for all 837 items (this is really important, and I’ll come back to it). Some of the names needed to be edited, and that was easy to do. The final step was to enhance photos of items we wanted to feature on estatesales.net. Valuable’s photo enhancing tool can change the background, fix shadows, take reflections out of mirrors, fold blankets, put clothes on mannequins, etc.–all with your phone camera and no photography equipment!

Here’s the best part. We posted the sale on estatesales.net within minutes, and the item name appeared in each photo. Valuable wrote the description of the sale and listed each item by name in the sale description. Why is this important? SEO, friend. Search engine optimization. People are looking for your stuff, and you want them to find it! We don’t know what’s normal (not being in the business), but our sale had nearly 7,000 viewers and 1,000 shoppers. If you’re curious, the listing is here: https://www.estatesales.net/NC/Raleigh/27609/4882929?force-reload=true&fbclid=IwY2xjawRp4IpleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZBAyMjIwMzkxNzg4MjAwODkyAAEermjzx6cl8Np7t85RIv1y4gaszvIzADm1o4Zsr5qNmLaIdxqv5KJtxwKyUwg_aem_CFNO_EAAEmeqUzePaxmKTQ.

Also, Valuable has an awesome creative director Magdalyn, who made this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffBrpJlzHnE. We posted it on our socials and some local Facebook groups and sent it to friends.

Bill's Tag

Amy's Tag

Last but not least, we used Valuable to print sales tags. Bill spent more time on his tag with a logo and photo of the item (highly recommend this for branding and tag switching), and I kept mine simple with item name and price. Printing tags directly from the app SAVED SO MUCH TIME.

Sale days: We hired friends and their kids to help with parking and checkout. It was a joy to welcome shoppers, and they were equally patient with us as we were with them. Some of our kids had a lemonade and cookie stand in the driveway, and one of our neighbors added items from their garage and joined us.

We accepted cash and Venmo. Thanks to our technology and product team, we beta tested a Shopify integration to accept credit cards and to keep track of sales.

Lessons learned: Three days was a long sale. Two days may have been as successful.

Maybe leave estate sales to the professionals. Typically, they get 50% of the sale revenue, and they earn it!

While we did not make this mistake, do not conduct an estate sale without Valuable! Two of us did most of the sale prep in four evenings. It saved countless hours and made the whole process easier. Truth is, we had a lot of fun!

Amy Miller Wolpert

Co-Founder