My First Estate Sale

I attended my first estate sale yesterday.  It was bitter-sweet.  There were a lot of people there.  The house was full of practically brand new furniture.  From doing some research, the house had only been lived in for 10 months.  Here are the details of my day.

At 8:00 a.m. my friend picked me up and we rode together to the house.  There were already about 15 people there and it was only 8:20 at that point.  We got a parking spot in the driveway.  We sat in the car for a bit and then we joined the crowd.

As we're standing there, people are pushing towards the door, anxiously awaiting the 9:00 a.m. point when the doors open.  I made a comment to the lady next to me about how crazy this was and it being my first estate sale.  Come to find out, it was her sister's deceased boyfriend's house that they had shared with their daughter.  Because they weren't married, she couldn't get anything out of the house once it went to the state.  She was there buying back all of her sister's keepsakes and sentimental items.  I was almost in tears.  

We asked her to show us the list of things that she wanted.  We kept a few things in mind and as we rushed in my friend found the lampshades that she wanted and put them in a basket to give to her.  As hard as it was to buy this stuff, we knew that the money was going to the daughter of the couple.  The hardest part was to watch people walking out with arms-full of his clothes.  That almost destroyed me.  I couldn't imagine if I saw someone carrying around my loved-one's clothes.  At this point, tears were welling up.

My friend and I were able to find a few things at pretty reasonable prices.  I bought 6 framed prints and a nice magazine rack.  My friend got the mother-load with a leather love seat, a chair, a mirror, huge planters, and a super-nice elliptical for 1/4 of the retail price.  

During this entire thing, my husband was at a men's breakfast and my friend's husband works out of town.  We carried EVERY SINGLE THING out to the car ourselves AND fit all in by ourselves., except the elliptical.  People at the estate sale didn't know that they were attending the "Cass & Val Gun Show"!  ;-)  Aside from mourning for this family, it was a great morning.  It was nice to get out of the house with a friend on a beautiful morning.  I will definitely be attending more estate sales.

Here's what I found out from my research.  The owner of the house was a 35 year old man that died while waiting for a heart transplant.  He had lived in that house for less than a year.  Maybe it wouldn't have seemed as weird if it had been an person that had lived their life to the fullest and died in their sleep.  Either way, I will be praying for this family, even though I'm sure that I'll never see them again.