I recently cleaned out my parent’s house, getting it ready to sell.
I was surprised to find out that basically, they had nothing of value. After some thought, I realized that most of my possessions fell into the same slot - expensive to purchase, but worthless to sell. For example:
Furniture - their furniture was good-quality, but way out of style, and we ended up donating most of it.
Art - they had art from around the world, but none of it was collectable.
Electronics - all obsolete.
I think about the stuff I spent a lot of money on (Electronic test equipment, tools, camera gear, etc.), and realize that when I shuffle off, it will probably all be landfilled…
I once moved cross-country and after some thought decided the best way to proceed was to simply pay some guys $500 to take most of my possessions away in a truck. The time and effort involved in trying to sell it would have been ridiculous. I’m sort of working on clearing out my parents house (they are still in there, so it gets difficult) and often I think burning the place to the ground (after removing the parents) might be the best solution.
I think the best offer I’ve heard is $0 - you can donate your body (I particularly like the body farms). I’ve never heard of any place that will actually pay, though!
If you mean elements like calcium, iron and so on, roughly that(If I remember correctly).
However, if you mean enzymes, hormones and such, it’s millions.
When I moved Mom into Assisted Living, we bought a new dresser and nightstand set, for $699. I’m sure that I could have gotten $15 for it at a yard sale…
My husband has a shop full of woodworking and metalworking equipment, as well as cabinets, work benches, and tons of hand tools. I know what it all cost. I know I can sell it if he dies before I do. I figure I’ll be lucky to get a tenth of what it cost. Same for my pottery wheel, slab roller, and kiln.
I wanted to weep when we got rid of our gigantic tube television. It wasn’t that old and we’d paid a lot for it at the time, but flat screen sets were so much bigger with better fidelity, and much easier to move. I was lucky that Purple Heart was still accepting tube TVs at the time. Our other old sets ended up in the recycling trailer at our landfill, along with the VCR.
I do have my grandmother’s Singer treadle machine and it still works - that might be worth something, right? I’m pretty sure I couldn’t even give my piano away now.
My Mother-in-law’s estate had about 8 fur pieces, from the 50s I would guess. They were quite expensive in their day. The folks had receipts for summertime cold storage even.
NO ONE wears furs anymore or will give you anything for them. We do not care one bit about their lack of worth, but more about “Just what do we do with these? Throw them away?”
I finally ended up selling them at a swap meet for about $5 each. One lady was going to actually wear one, but the others I suspect will end up as repurposed teddy bears.
After getting divorced, I was quite surprised to learn that my wedding and engagement rings were near worthless. All the jewelers who advertised that they’d buy the stuff told me that since they couldn’t guarantee the purity of the gold, that it was worthless and only the diamond would fetch me a small return. Bought for around $500, resale value about $25.
How is any of this stuff worthless? Did no one get to sit on the furniture for 40 years? Did no one wear any of the furs or jewelry? Did no one get to use the electronics? Did no one put any of the woodworking tools to use?
Collectibles that you purchase and don’t get to play with/enjoy while they sit on the shelf and eventually lose worth…that stuff ends up as worthless.
But things you purchase and then use and enjoy regularly are not worthless. Low resale value maybe but when you buy stuff do you buy it to use it or to sell it? Do you guys get sad when you buy an expensive dinner and it just turns to useless poop in the end?
With the exception of some lenses and a few collectible cameras, film photography equipment that was very expensive when new doesn’t seem to be worth much these days.
I guess my issue is this:
Sure, these things have utility, but but it irks me that they are expensive to buy, and then difficult (or impossible) to re-sell - even if they are still perfectly functional.
It just makes me sad to trash an entire household’s worth of cherished items, and find that none of it had any value. I kept my Dad’s slide rules, some photos, and their old Taylor barometer. My sister got the silverware.
Like others, my parents have a 2000 square foot house full of stuff. They have multiple sets of china, crystal stemware, tchotchkes, furniture, clothes and so forth. My brother is married and has his own house full of stuff. I have a one-bedroom apartment full of stuff. And so we have no interest in the vast majority of the stuff in their house. They realize that they need to downsize, preferably while they’re still alive but we don’t know where to start.
A while back I heard an NPR interview with Allison Stewart, a journalist who wrote a book on junk and about how the older generations (the ones who grew up during the Great Depression and World War II) accumulated stuff, while the younger generations mostly only keep stuff digitally.
My brother’s kids are graduating from high school and college this year, and my mother was trying to think of things to give them for gifts. But they’re not going to want a fancy pen or a briefcase or a dictionary (all traditional graduation gifts).
