Mom's moving! Need Auction House info! (Pittsburgh: for sale, mattress, how much)

[Tallysmom]

Well -- Mom is moving into a much smaller place, with no yardwork and air conditioning! But we have a house full of stuff and I KNOW other people have gone through this -- anyone know of a good Auction House to run the "not quite estate" sale?

[Awesomo.2000]

just craigslist everything. When I moved back to Pittsburgh I got rid of old TVs, Microwaves, furniture, pretty much everything not worth bringing back on craigslist.

[Tallysmom]

Originally Posted by Awesomo.2000

just craigslist everything. When I moved back to Pittsburgh I got rid of old TVs, Microwaves, furniture, pretty much everything not worth bringing back on craigslist.

Usually a great idea, but that won't work in this case.... it's too much stuff, I can't be there to police people with my mom, I don't feel comfortable with strangers coming to my mother's house, and my sister works full time and has no time either.

[Katiana]

Yeah, lots of people suggested we take the old books to a used bookstore, etc, but we really had no time. We gave most of it to the Salvation Army, threw out the rest (her mattress fell apart when it was thrown onto the dump truck, that's how old it was). My bro and I kept what we wanted. One thing my friend suggested which we did was have a mini-garage sale as we cleaned out the house. We just put the stuff outside with a "for sale" sign on it. We did move some of the stuff that way.

[Tallysmom]

Originally Posted by Katiana

Yeah, lots of people suggested we take the old books to a used bookstore, etc, but we really had no time. We gave most of it to the Salvation Army, threw out the rest (her mattress fell apart when it was thrown onto the dump truck, that's how old it was). My bro and I kept what we wanted. One thing my friend suggested which we did was have a mini-garage sale as we cleaned out the house. We just put the stuff outside with a "for sale" sign on it. We did move some of the stuff that way.

During the first few months of my working at the bank, a little old lady who was pretty hostile would come in and cash her Social Security check.... she died and a month later her son came in with two bags.... and an attitude that matched the mother's.

The bags were filled with twisted twirled money. When they threw out her matress it came apart (thank heavens!) and they noticed she had stuffed it with money,wrapping the 100's around the springs...

[cariad]

Pittsburgh is a good area for estate/moving sales, rather than an auction. DM if you would like the name of someone I can recommend.

[WaxDiva]

We used an auction service several years ago and were very pleased with the results. At the time, their take was around 30%, so the higher they got the price, the more they got.

They took care of everything...picking items up, advertising, etc. If your mother has a house full of things to sell, I would definitely recommend going this route. If she only has a few items, then ebay or craigslist would be great.

The auction house that we used was Johnson Auction Service. They are located in the airport area and they do have a website, so visit their site, call them and decide for yourself if it's the best way. Their site is:
Johnson Auction Service

Again, we used them years ago, so I don't know what or how much has changed, but we were satisfied.

[Tallysmom]

Thanks everyone -- we've decided to hold off a little bit, and will probably use the Auction Barn close by to Mom...