Well it was quite another busy weekend! As I've mentioned in my other posts , I hand pick many of my pieces from Craigslist. I look for character, quality, and of course the right price! It take lots of time and gas running around from city to city picking a piece here and there. Since opening the shop, I've heard from many customers that you can get great pieces at affordable prices at Estate sales. Now, I've been to auctions, which I like, and you can get some amazing deals from, but I'm not so keen on bidding. So last week, I scrolled through all of the estate sale postings on www.estatesale.net and looked at all the pictures of what was going to be at each sale. This is a great way to find out which sales you want to go to instead of running around from sale to sale taking your chance at hit or miss on things. Looking through several, I found this estate sale in St. Louis not far from where I live. From the photos, I could see several pieces in great condition and with a lot of character, my kind of sale! Next I had to decide what time or day to go. The sale was on Saturday and Sunday from 9 to 3. Again, I heard from numerous friends to go on the last day of sale to get the best deals. Ok, so that was an option, but what if all the good furniture was gone by then? On the other hand, I was worried if I went on the first day, prices would be to high. After much thought I decided to go on the first day of the sale which according to the ad, started at 9 but distribution numbers at 8. What in the world is a distribution number again?! I search the web and got the low down on what is a distribution number, which basically is a number they give you starting about an hour before the sale begins that represents your spot when the doors open. Got it. So hubby and I take off from home around 7 a.m. to get a good number and arrive near 7:40. There was not a car in sight, so I jumped out to check the front door and found a basket full of numbers. On top was lucky number 15 as I call it now! We waited patiently until right before 9 when everyone, and I mean around 60 or more people, started lining up to go in. I could feel my competitive side kicking in as I told my husband our game plan, haha! I remembered from the photos on the website that there was a nice desk which looked to be on a concrete floor, so I suggested he go directly down stairs of this house and find it.
It was time. The doors opened, everyone made a dash in according to their number and I was on a mission! At first glance I could see several beautiful pieces, but what about the prices? Fantastic!! I quickly grabbed the price tag from each piece that appealed to me and before I knew it I had a handful of tickets when my husband found me with his ticket of the desk I had a hunch on. We did good.
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| the truck with all the goodies |
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| AND our trailer with more goodies! |
The company who hosted this sale was a local company called Carondelet Estate Services,
carondeletestateservices.com, and they did an amazing job. They were very organized and patient with such a big crowd. I paid for my goodies and we were loaded up and headed for home in no time! I could hardly wait to get home and closely examine each piece trying to in vision what to do with it or what color it would be fabulous in. So for us, the first day of estate sales was the way to go, because we basically took the balk of the furniture, and had we gone the second day, someone like us could have had it all leaving us with nada!
