Online Estate Auctions - Host or Shop Estate Sales

It depends on how fast the money is needed. Pawn shops and gold buyers pay the same day, and that speed is what the seller pays for. Those buyers have to resell the item to make money, so their offer is usually well below what the item would bring on the open market. With gold and silver jewelry, the offer is often based on the weight of the metal alone, no matter what the piece actually is.

Waiting one to three weeks usually brings more. Online auction sites like CTBids.com put items in front of tens of thousands of registered collectors and dealers who bid against each other. That means people who recognize a rare coin year, a maker's mark, or a graded card are competing to buy it, instead of one local shop setting the price alone. The gap is biggest on items where knowing what something is changes what it is worth: coins, sports cards, jewelry by known makers, art, and collections.

For one common item, a pawn shop is fine. For a collection, the difference in price is often large.

For a collection of any size, an auction with many bidders usually beats a single offer from one buyer. A local coin shop makes one offer, and that offer is limited by what the shop can resell the coins for and how long the shop is willing to sit on them. An auction puts coin collectors and dealers across the country in competition for the same coins.

Three things decide the result. First, the collection has to be looked up and sorted properly, so rare years and mint marks get listed on their own instead of being dumped into one big lot. Second, it has to reach real coin collectors, not general shoppers. Third, it has to be split up smartly, since some collections bring more sold together and others bring more sold piece by piece.

Caring Transitions sells coin collections through CTBids.com, where each lot gets researched, photographed, and described.

Selling online yourself makes sense for a few items when the seller already knows what they are worth. For a whole collection, or for anything where the value is unclear, a service usually comes out ahead.

Selling online yourself means looking up and pricing every item, photographing and listing each one, answering buyer questions, handling returns and complaints, and packing and shipping every sale. It also means the pricing risk falls on the seller. The most common outcome is that a valuable piece gets listed at a guessed price and sells in ten minutes to a dealer who knew exactly what it was.

An auction service looks up values, photographs and lists everything, markets to collectors, runs the bidding, and handles payment, pickup, and shipping. The service is paid out of what sells.

Here is a simple test. If the seller can name the three most valuable items in the collection and explain why they are the most valuable, selling online alone is reasonable. If not, the money lost to wrong prices will likely be more than a service would have cost.

Asking prices are not values. What matters is what similar items have actually sold for, which is often very different from what sellers are asking.

For most types of items, sold listings, auction records, and price guides give a starting point. Condition matters enormously, and for coins, sports cards, and jewelry it often matters more than the item itself. A coin in worn condition and the same coin in mint condition can differ in price by many times.

Professional estate sale companies look up each valuable piece against real sold prices before setting a starting bid. That research is a big part of what the fee covers. Caring Transitions Tustin-Orange offers a free walkthrough and a conversation about value before any commitment.

Items that people collect sell well at auction. That includes coins and paper money, sports cards and memorabilia, jewelry, sterling silver, art and prints, antique furniture, china and crystal from known makers, old toys, tools, musical instruments, stamps, figurines, and military items.

Items that usually do better donated include everyday furniture in worn shape, common household goods, regular clothing, and anything where shipping would cost more than the item is worth.

The simple test is whether people collect that kind of thing. A good estate sale does both at once. Collectible items go to bidders across the country, everyday household goods sell locally or get donated, and the family is not left with anything to deal with.