Estate Sale, Vintage Shop & Liquidator Blog
What Is EstateSaleFinder? A Letter From Our Founders, Andy & Jac
EstateSaleFinder is more than a listing site — it's an Ai-powered toolkit for finding estate sales and for running the business behind them. In this letter, founders Andy and Jac share what they're building, who it's for, why they're starting in Florida, Texas, and California, and how you can be part of the beginning.
The Blog is EstateSaleFinder’s source for estate sale tips, vintage shop guides, pricing research, and practical advice for estate liquidators, buyers, and sellers. Explore how to shop and run estate sales, price valuable vintage items, improve a vintage shop, and understand the estate liquidation process.
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Every Item Is a Giveaway: Join Our Estate Sale Finds Show on Whatnot (App)
On October 1, we're bringing fairy lamps, uranium glass, and more estate-sale finds to an entire Whatnot app show of vintage giveaways—with shipping on us.
Stop Losing Tables, Signs, and Shelving: Equipment Tracking for Estate Sale Companies
Missing tables, forgotten signs, and equipment left at a client’s home quietly erase profit. See the real phone-first system that tracks what you own, where it is, and who has it.
How to Advertise an Estate Sale: A Step-by-Step Playbook
A practical estate sale advertising playbook covering photos, listings, social media, neighborhood outreach, signage, sale-day updates, and leftover-item planning.
Estate Cleanout or Estate Sale? How to Decide — and What Each Really Costs
One of these empties the house and sends you a bill. The other sells the contents and sends you a check. Families lose real money by picking the wrong one — here's the honest way to decide, what each actually costs, and why doing both in the right order is often the smartest move.
The $36,285 Marble: How to Tell If Vintage Marbles Are Valuable
Grandma’s jar may hold ordinary players, miniature glass art, or both. Here is the entertaining, evidence-first guide to pontils, onionskins, Lutz marbles, sulfides, condition, reproductions, and the extraordinary marble that sold for $36,285.
The $2,200 Waffle Iron: When Grandma's Appliance Is Art Deco
That chrome waffle iron on the appliance shelf may be more design object than breakfast tool. Here is the honest story behind a $2,200 ask, a verified $950 Griswold sale, and the clues that separate an exceptional find from an ordinary iron.
The $77,000 Toy Train: Lionel, and Why the Attic Collection Could Be a Windfall
A black locomotive in Grandpa's attic might be a common postwar runner, a four-figure first-year Berkshire, or one of the rarest Lionel trains ever made. Here is how to tell the difference without cleaning away the evidence, mixing up the boxes, or trusting a price copied around the internet.
Get Paid to Grow With Us: Inside the EstateSaleFinder Referral Program
Tell one estate sale company about EstateSaleFinder and earn $20 every single month they stay. Booth Max sellers pay $10 a month. Or take 30 free days of Pro instead — your call. Here's exactly how the money works, what you'd earn, and how to join in about two minutes.
Stop Turning Down Estate Sales: Every “Impossible” Sale Early Offers Unlocks
You get about 20 hours to sell an entire household, and you're hoping the one buyer who wants the dining set happens to be free on Saturday morning. That's why the gated community, the 55+ village, the storage unit, and the staged listing where the agent won't allow foot traffic all get turned down. Early Offers takes the crowd out of the equation: buyers browse your tagged items, make offers, and pay before opening day, then collect in scheduled pickup windows you control.
The $5 Necklace That's $500: Costume Jewelry Brands Worth Knowing
The jewelry box is the most-opened drawer at any estate sale, and it is also the most consistently mispriced. Almost everything in it is worth a few dollars — but five American makers put signatures on the back of pieces that now sell for hundreds, and occasionally thousands. Here's the real history, honestly dated auction results, and how to check a mark in under a minute.
Your Buyers Are Done Standing in Line at 6 A.M. — One Live Workshop Explains What Replaces It
On Monday, September 7, 2026, Jenna Pecor is hosting a live 2-hour workshop through the Institute for Estate Sale Professionals on the Preoffer Process — letting buyers make offers on tagged items before your doors ever open. I'll be on it too, talking about how the system was built and where it goes next. $20, 40 seats, and everyone who registers gets the recording.
The Dishwasher Did It: Why Two Identical Pyrex Bowls Sell for Wildly Different Money
Two turquoise bowls, same pattern, same year, same shelf. One is glossy and sells like a collectible. The other is chalky, dull, and nearly worthless — and the only difference is that somebody loved it enough to run it through the dishwasher. The Corning Museum of Glass's chief conservator has a one-line rule about this, and almost nobody's grandmother heard it in time.
The Last Generation of "Stuff": Why Boomer Estates Are a Uniquely Rich — and Fleeting — Era
Americans born 1946–1964 are the last generation to furnish an entire life with durable, largely American-made objects — and to keep them for fifty years in one house. All of it is entering estate sales at once, right now. Here's the demographic data behind the wave, exactly what to hunt while it's here, what's collapsing in value, and how long the window stays open.
Uranium Glass: The Salad Bowl That Glows
There is a bowl in somebody's china cabinet right now that looks like weak lemonade in daylight and blazes electric green under a $12 flashlight, because it was made with uranium. Here's the true story of Vaseline glass — why it stopped in 1943 and restarted in 1959, what it honestly sells for, whether it's safe (mostly yes, with one rule), and how to find it across a dim estate sale in four seconds.
Beanie Babies, Junk-Wax Cards and the '90s Comic Crash: What the Last Manias Teach Resellers
Three times in one decade, America was absolutely certain it had found the retirement plan. Three times, America was holding a plastic tote of it. Here's what Beanie Babies, junk-wax baseball cards and the '90s comic crash actually teach you about buying at estate sales — and the four-question test that separates real scarcity from nostalgia.
How to Search Estate Sales by Item Instead of by Sale (Shop by Occasion)
Nobody wakes up wanting sale #4839. They want twelve wine glasses for an October wedding, or a dresser and a lamp for a first apartment. Here's how to search estate sales by item on EstateSaleFinder — occasion pages for your city, keyword search inside the sales, radius expansion, and alerts that tell you the moment a match gets photographed.
You Shouldn't Have to Put Your Whole Life on Hold to Run an Estate Sale
Being an estate sale operator can be all-consuming — and the pricing table is usually where your personal life goes to die. Jenna Pecor said it better than I could, so we're saying it together: the Institute for Estate Sale Professionals and EstateSaleFinder are working on the same problem from two directions. Better ways to operate, and better tools to do it with.
Free With Oatmeal: How Depression Glass Ended Up in Every Grandma’s Cupboard
It was free with a box of oats, free at the movies, free in a sack of flour — and somehow it survived a century of dishwashers and moves to sit in almost every grandmother’s cupboard in America. Here’s the real story of Depression glass, how to identify the patterns and colors that matter, what it honestly sells for in 2026, and the tells that separate a 1932 plate from a 1978 copy.
Estate Sale, Vintage Shop & Liquidator Guides
7 categories, 166 guides and stories.