And their stuff is for sale, right?
Or does estate = garage = rummage = yard etc?
Some folks around my 'hood seem to have an estate sale every weekend when the weather’s nice. Which is most weekends around these parts. 
I know what “estate” means, I’m not sure about the term “estate sale”.
Peace,
mangeorge, sometimes picker of nits.
Yep, estate sale generally means someone died.
Well, next time I see one, I’m gonna stop and ask. 
It seems to depend on where you are. In proper legal parlance, as “estate sale” means the sale of the effects of some deceased person, period.
But I agree I’ve recently seen a lot of sales labeled “estate sales” that were/are really garage sales, i.e. a household selling off some misc junk, either to make room for more useless mall purchases or because they’ve fallen on hard times and need the cash.
Sometimes it’s simple ignorance,. But I bet a lot of these people are trying to outsmart customers who they think are thinking: “garage sale = useless junk sale, so don’t bother stopping, but estate sale = everything must go, even the good stuff, so I’d better stop.” They may also think folks will be prepared to pay more for “estate” merchandise out of respect for the dead or a desire not to take advantage of (or insult) the grieving sellers.
So many good distinctions in language are ruined by businessmen out to mislead with a deception that can later be denied or at least attributed to honest error. Swine.
I always understood ‘estate sale’ to mean the sale of all or most of a person’s belongings- usually because they’re dead, but could also be because they’re moving to a nursing home or retirement community and have decided to just sell everything and divvy up the money to their heirs while they’re still alive. You know, like King Lear.
Neighbors of mine had an estate sale before they moved to Hawaii. It would have cost entirely too much to transfer the furniture, so they just sold it. But you’re right, it’s *usually * the entire contents of the estate of a deceased person.
Maybe it just sounds better, less “double-wide”, than “yard” sale.
Gotta go. Time for NASCAR.
Some people think that they should call a recurring garage sale an “estate” sale because they’re having it inside. Others think that calling a garage sale an “estate” sale qualifies them to price their items higher than if they were having a sale where people who typically go to garage sales would expect to pay much less for items. I’ve known of some estate sales to occur over two weekends if there is just a huge amount of stuff to get rid of, but the average “real” estate sale normally happens over the course of one weekend.
Now, this is just my experience, so I have nothing to back it up. Growing up in the rural midwest (specifically, southeastern South Dakota), it seemed like estate sales and auctions were often used to mean the same thing. By this, I mean if you saw an announcement in the local weekly for an estate sale, they would have hired one of many local auctioneer outfits to sell off the lots of merchandise. Larger items would stand on their own, smaller, less expensive items would often be boxed up for sale as a unit (for example, a box of tupperware going as one lot). These sales occurred most often for two reasons: 1) the death of the (usually elderly) owner, fitting in with the ‘true meaning’ of estate sale, and often land would be the last thing sold. 2) the owner(s) (usually older couple) would be moving into town/retirement center, so they would need to get rid of a bunch of stuff.
Estate sales/auctions usually had better merchandise than the average garage sale, and thus could justify the higher price compared to garage sale pricing. Often, if the auctioneer outfit that was running the show owned an auction house, they would have their workers bid on items they thought they could resell at a profit later. I recall these people as being pretty clearly marked, so the auctioneer would not be tempted to ‘miss’ bids.