Auction House, Estate Sale, or Local Auction: Where Your Best Pieces Belong

Estate sales and local auctions are built to clear a house. An auction house is built to find the one buyer who wants your best piece most. Here is how each option works, what each one costs you, and how to use them together.

SebastianCharles Auctions

When you clear a parent's house or downsize your own, you usually hear about three options: an estate sale company, a local auction, or an auction house. People treat them as interchangeable. They are not. Each one does a different job, and sending your best pieces to the wrong one is the most expensive mistake in the whole process.

How an estate sale works

An estate sale company prices everything in the house, opens the doors for two or three days, and sells to whoever walks in. The company sets prices before the sale, and prices usually drop on the last day. Most estate sale companies charge 30 to 40 percent of gross sales, and some add fees for setup, advertising or cleanout.

Estate sales are excellent at volume. Furniture, kitchenware, tools, linens and the everyday contents of a house move fast and the house gets empty. The weakness is price. Every tag is a guess made before any buyer shows up, and the buyers are whoever lives nearby that weekend. A piece tagged at $400 sells for $400 to the first dealer through the door, even if two collectors across the country would have fought over it.

How a local auction works

A local auction, in person or online, sells each item to the highest bidder. That beats a fixed price tag, because competition sets the number. The limit is the bidder pool. Local general auctions draw mostly local buyers, and descriptions tend to be short. A specialist collector in another state has little to go on, so the piece sells to the room.

For general household goods, that works fine. For a signed painting, a Tiffany Studios lamp or a piece of Navajo silver, the right buyer may never see it.

How an auction house works

An auction house researches each piece, photographs it, writes a catalog description, sets an estimate, and offers it where serious collectors already shop. At SebastianCharles, our sales run on LiveAuctioneers, Invaluable and HiBid, so a bidder down the street, a bidder across the country and a bidder overseas can all compete for the same lot at the same time.

The research is the part people underestimate. Identifying the maker, the period and the right audience is what puts a piece in front of the buyers who will pay most for it.

What competition does to price

Our estimates are our best judgment before the sale. Bidders set the final price. Here are recent SebastianCharles results:

• William Hart "Calm Waters" oil on canvas: $12,500 (estimate $2,000 to $4,000)
• Shepard Fairey "Hope" lithograph: $12,500 (estimate $3,000 to $5,000)
• Antique Williams No. 1 typewriter: $5,500 (estimate $300 to $600)
• Pablo Picasso 347 two volume folio set: $3,800 (estimate $200 to $400)
• Glass globe shade in the style of L.C. Tiffany: $3,600 (estimate $200 to $400)
• Southwestern Navajo silver and stone cuff: $2,300 (estimate $50 to $100)

Not every lot beats its estimate. Plenty sell within it, and some sell below. The point is that the final price comes from real competition between informed bidders, not from a tag written the week before.

What each option costs you

All three charge you something, usually a percentage. The rate alone tells you very little. Ask each one what you should expect to net on your specific pieces, and compare that number. A lower commission on a fixed price can leave you with less money than a higher commission on a competitive sale.

The approach that works for most estates

Most estates need more than one of these. The order matters.

1. Pull the pieces with collector demand first. Think fine jewelry, art, signed glass and lamps, sterling silver, watches, Native American material, rare books and unusual antiques.
2. Consign those pieces to auction.
3. Let an estate sale or cleanout company handle the everyday contents.

Once a piece sells at a tag price, it is gone. If you are not sure which pieces belong in which pile, get them looked at before anyone prices the house. Our guide on how to sell an inherited estate walks through the whole process.

How we can help

Sebastian Gholl, owner and auctioneer of SebastianCharles Auctions, reviews every inquiry himself. Send photos of the pieces you are unsure about through our free estimate form. You can see more results on our auction highlights page or read about our estate services.