The Estate Sale Playbook: Shop Like a Dealer

An estate sale is not a store. It's a race with three heats: full-price day, discount day, and make-an-offer day. Dealers plan the whole weekend before it starts — which sales to hit Friday at open for the good stuff, and which to circle back to Sunday when everything left is negotiable.

Friday morning strategy: go straight past the furniture to the small stuff — jewelry boxes, kitchen drawers, the garage workbench. That's where the mispriced treasure hides, and it fits in your hands while you decide. Furniture will still be there in an hour; the Bakelite will not.

Sunday strategy is the opposite: walk in with a number. 'Would you take forty for the dresser?' works on Sunday afternoon in a way it never will on Friday. The crew would rather sell it than haul it, and everyone knows it.

And the one question that pays for itself: ask the crew what's still in the house that isn't out yet. Basements and attics get staged in waves, and the person running the sale knows exactly what's coming out tomorrow. Being friendly with the staff is the cheapest picking advantage there is.