Several years ago there was a story on 20/20 (Nightline? whatever) where a man was selling coffins at a h-u-g-e discount out of a self-storage unit in Texas. The furneral home industry was doing everything in it’s power to shut him down but there was (fortunately) no laws prohibiting it.
I would guess that the funeral home industry will fight back by charging exhorbitant prices for things that you can’t get at Costco such as embalming and body preparation.
Reminds me of a store near me called Caskets N’ More. There’s just something odd about a name like that.
It makes me wonder what the hell the More could be. Would it be too much to ask of you to go inside and check it out? 
And I think I’d be fine if my family buried me in a packing crate. I don’t think I want to be cremated, but I see no reason for ultra-plush satin lining and mahogany panels with solid gold fixtures. Unless I’m a vampire. Then I want top-of-the-line.
My uncle is a Monk there! (I call him my monkle). My whole family will be eternally resting in a Monk made boxes. I like the #3 pine too. I originally thought $795 was kind of steep, until I saw what others cost.
They are really solid, and that wood isn’t from some fancy new tree. Nope. No sir. All old growth down there. And they have their own saw mill near the monestary, so they make them from the ground up so you can be from the ground down. Some of the Oak and Black walnut is over 100 years old. Some of the monks are too.
Can you lend me $5,000? I’ll pay you back when you die and put it in your casket. Will a check be OK?
Seriously, why go hog wild with expensive accoutrements when they will either rot six feet under or go up in smoke?
We had the advantage when my father died in that he helped choose his own casket for cremation. Because he enjoyed working with wood as a hobby of sorts (Hell, as a white collor businessman in corporate insurance he designed and built the family home with no formal or apprenticeship building skills!), he settled for just above the simple pine box. We all made sure it had a great finish to it and you would never have guessed it wasn’t walnut or mahogony. He didn’t not want to waste the wood in the fire nor the money.
Were we cheap? By some of the comments here, you betcha, and proud of it, too! To be blunt the money we saved went into the grand kids college funds, into planting saplings and buying some creature comforts our mother would need alone.
Dad’s funeral costs live everyday now in those young trees. Life goes on and the birds and squirrels jusy don’t know how lucky they are.
As for me, I like the Trappist Monks caskets. I would even consider scrounging some clean wooden pallets and build my own. Why waste some good timber as I eventually will be my own Burning Man?
Then be careful if you also pre-purchase your burial place. The traditional Jewish casket is a plain pine box, but Grandpop had prepurchased a mortuary slot, and as burial is then above ground, the mortuary requires a stainless-steel casket to, as the funeral director so tactfully put it, “control odor and leakage.”
I really could have lived without that image at that particular moment.
I don’t think I’d want a coffin from Costco. For one thing, they’d probably only come in a 16 pack and I’d never use them all.
Mrs. Giraffe and I went to Ikea the other day and noticed that there is a small funeral home right next door. She commented on how funny it would be if it was bought up by Ikea. We laughed at the idea of Ikea coffins. We decided they would call the coffin line Mort (with a slash through the ‘o’), the coffins would have clean lines and come in several colors (birch, beech, etc.), and you’d have to put them together yourself. You could add little lights to highlight the corpse. The coffin lids would be sold separately and would always be out of stock. (This last is based on buying a table from Ikea. The surface and legs were sold separately, and for some reason the legs were out of stock every time we went in there, over a period of months.)
It made me laugh, anyway.
"Ask about our lay-away plan!"
You know, I’m a HELL of a woodworker - I’ve never considered it before, but maybe I should just build my own??
I’ve told this story before, but it bears repeating:
A priest I knew, pastor of my parish, was given a terminal diagnosis of lung cancer. He had a very plain pine plywood box made. (he was a big guy - over 6’ tall and probably over 350 lbs) He stood up in it when it was done, said “yeah, it fits”, and had shelves put it in it. He then used it as a bookcase until he died, then they removed the shelves and buried him in it.
StG
from a link on the Trappist Monk site…
Funeral Depot?
Home Depot, Office Depot…but Funeral Depot?
Bwaaahaaaahaaahaaa!
[QUOTE=Draelin]
It makes me wonder what the hell the More could be. Would it be too much to ask of you to go inside and check it out?
snip
[QUOTE]
Oh, man…I’ll call first. Correction on the name: It’s Caskets N-More. That’s even stranger.
I heard the head of marketing for Costco on the radio explaining the way the Costco thing works. Apparently, it’s part of a pre-planning thing, you just purchase the casket through Costco at a pretty significant savings and then arrangements are made for it to be made available to the funeral home when the need arises. Not that big a deal.
Mr. TeaElle and I have pre-planned our funerals and our caskets are chosen and paid for. Given the $1,200 price difference in cost between my father’s casket in 1984 and my father-in-law’s fairly identical casket in 1994, it’s a fair presumption that by the time either of us die (which will be 40+ years from now, I hope) the costs will be outrageous. Better to have it all done with so that no one has to scrape together money or fight over whether or not mom might like mahoghany or brushed steel better.
Giraffe, this is just a small sampling of just why I adore you in a non-biblical manner.
In a missing issue of Ready Made Magazine they had the very thing. Ikea shelves ( I think the Billy) had handles put on the outside and I believe lids of the standard bookcase variety. It could be used as a regular coffee table until needed for burial. Pretty freaking cool and stylish.
Two of my late brothers did a pre-buy of their funerals.
One paid about $900 into the pay-before-you-go . His funeral, very basic, cost over $5000. He did not have assets worth $5k, he was on disability for years. My mom paid for it. It would have cost more if my aunt and me/I didn’t intervene and stop my mother from allowing her guilt of her failings and all that entails to take over and get the top model casket and all the trappings.
It is just insane.
I noticed in Costco that they sell engagement rings. Isn’t that as bad? How romantic…
I highly recommend that you buy, borrow or checkout from the libraryThe American Way Of Death Revisited by Jessica Mitford. It’s an eye-opener that is almost guaranteed to save you money and grief.
What, a jewelry shop where you’ll pay more for the same ring is automatically more romantic somehow? My sister and her fiance got her engagement ring at either Costco or Sam’s Club, and it’s a beautiful ring. The stone is extremely good quality, and is a non-DeBeers diamond; it’s from Canada and is engraved with the certification.
Awwww! Wait, non-biblical? Nuts.
Heck, slap a glass lid on there and you could put snacks and dip on it during the wake. Perfect for when you don’t have room for a dead body and a snack table – no wasted space!
My grandpa has made his own coffin. It’s a rough pine box with rope handles. He keeps it in the garage and uses it as a toolbox. Although visitors to the garage have mistaken it for a boat and informed him that it wouldn’t float.
Every now and then, he whips it out “to practice and make sure that it still fits” - makes for great family photos - grandpa playing dead, grandpa posing in his coffin… For his 70th birthday party, he wanted to get his sons and grandsons to bear him into the room in the coffin as a grand entrance - he would have too, except that they flat out refused beacuse they thought it was in poor taste.