Estate sales, for the vultures?

So, Marc and I have recently gotten into going to estate sales, not the kind that's really just a garage sale where people want to make it sound better than it is, but the kind where people die and then their relatives contact a company to come in and sell off everything in their dead relatives house. So, herein lies my conflict. I love vintage things and it's hard to find the really good stuff at crappy garage sales, but on the other hand I feel like a vulture pillaging the remains of some person deceased person's life when I go to these "real" estate sales.

At the last sale, I walked into one of the bedrooms and saw a box filled with old scarves. I picked one up and the smell of perfume surrounded me. I felt like I was an intruder in someone else's life. I immediately dropped the scarf and left the room. I started thinking about what the woman must have been like. Did she have children and grandchildren? Who lived in the house with her? Was she lonely before she died? I can't say I didn't purchase anything. I bought some limoge dishes, but I could not buy anything from the closet. It seemed too personal and too intimate.

Nevertheless, we signed up on the mailing list to find out when these estate sales take place. It's all big business. The woman who runs them in our area is very no-nonsense. She doesn't chat, she doesn't negotiate and she doesn't help pack up your purchases (I found this out with my limoge - note to self bring tissue and bags next time). She will however try to get you to buy more than you want and tell you how wonderful everything is that she's selling. I have this feeling she gets a large commission.

So, Marc and I head out early for our 2nd estate sale adventure. We plan to get there right at 9am and we do because we forego Starbucks to get there on time. Big mistake. We arrive and there are twenty people lined up outside waiting to get in. I do a double take. Now we are waiting and I have not yet had my coffee. I feel a sense of panic and urgency. They have a sign-up list. What we are signing up for, we don't know, but we sign up anyway. A woman explains that they only let in a few people at a time. This is a strange and new world. Everyone else seems to know the rules. The doors open and lucky for us everyone is let in, the sign-up sheet is tossed away. People hurry inside and start grabbing things like mad. I feel the need to buy stuff quickly. A girl walks up in front of me and asks if a set of wine glasses are murano glass - they are - and she buys them. I feel a sense of remorse. I might have wanted them, now it's too late. I move on to other things, I must buy them before someone else gets them. I start buying many things I don't need. Marc calls these things craptiques because the seller claims that these are valuable antiques, but it's really just old crap.

We go home with a tea pot, a tea cup (not matching), an oil painting by Puccini (if anyone knows if he's famous let us know), and some things that hang over the neck of wine bottles that label them chardonnay, merlot, chianti and cab (because wine labels don't let people know what they are drinking, but they are pretty).

We will definitely be going again.