My mother was an antique dealer. When we were kids, we never knew from one day to the next what we would have in our house. We would come home from school to find our bedroom furniture sold, and she literally sold the kitchen table out from under the dinner. I learned not to get attached to inanimate things.
The things I prize are my animals. I’ve made a deal that one niece gets my paid-off farm and a fund to care for the animals for the rest of their lives. She’s free to do whatever with the farm and the contents of the house. As my farm has appreciated in value over the years, I’ve thought that it’s not really fair to my other nieces & nephews, who will split my financial assets. Right now the farm’s probably worth about $600K, and I have about $500K in savings. Split 10 ways, that leaves a pretty lopsided division. But she’s the one I trust to care for my animals.
I do wish we had family we trusted to take care of our cats. The reason we are paying large amounts every year while our cats are alive and forcing the caretakers to give everything up when the last cat dies is our attempt at making the caretakers want to do everything they can to keep the cats alive as long as they can. Hopefully humanely.
I have some nice stuff. I have some valuable stuff. I have some sentimental stuff. The kids don’t want it. I don’t have the energy, and it’s not worth the effort, to sell any of it.
Buy Nothing made me look at stuff a whole different way. It’s hyper-local, and provides opportunity to give people stuff that they want, need or will treasure instead of leaving it for someday, someone else to deal with.
I have a gorgeous, bright-sounding piano, which I hope will stay with the house. The wall it’s against is exactly the right size, and not useful for much else. Other than that, everything is pleasing and attractive and useful, though not particularly valuable. I’ve unloaded a bunch of stuff already, and have some more to go, but my daughters know that none of it is their duty to keep, and will probably get them some decent money in an estate sale.
Well, THIS changed my mind about just leaving everything to my wife (if it’s not a cookbook or gardening supplies, she wouldn’t want it).
Or my kids (who believe that a beautifully curated comic book collection is “old guy stuff”).
So I think I will try to find people who love those things half as much as I do… or, if I don’t get to it, let my kids do that.
But I’ll tell you one thing: once I’m gone, I’m going to be really busy exploring the universe (or the meta-universe, or a sports bar in Rivendell, wherever I find myself). I am not going to care what happened to my Pez dispensers.
I have a spinning wheel that is probably around 190 years old. I’d like that to go to someone who can appreciate it, along with my weaving loom and 110+ year old treadle sewing machine. And, by the way, they’re all working antiques.
I have some other things of value/importance. I’ve outlined this in my will and also informed those who will be in charge of my stuff after I’m gone, with suggestions about what to do with it all.
At some point in time I expect we’ll have a living estate sale or auction. It’s the garage contents and a few mcm pieces inside along with the vintage ephemera recently added from our parents households that might have value.
I’d downsize it all next year if it was up to me. But over his dead body otherwise.
We have a living trust but it hasn’t been updated in over 15 years. Gotta do that!
We own an old classic car that is my wife’s dream car. I don’t think any of the kids would be interested in it. It’ll probably be sold in an estate sale.
There are services that do it for you. Of course you have to trust that when you mail in a big box of precious photos that they’ll do what they say they’ll do with them.
My husband has his dream machine shop in our back yard. Our daughter has no interest or desire in keeping any of it, so someday, someone is in for a great deal on machine tools and hand tools. She won’t trash them, since she knows they’ve got value. If he dies before I do, there will probably be an auction in the shop.
I don’t own anything particularly valuable - just sentimental… to me. For example, there’s a picture hanging over my desk that I’m sure my grandparents bought from a department store, or maybe it was a gift. It’s not valuable or special, except that I remember it hanging in their living room and I always loved it. Wonder if I can make my granddaughter love it?
There’s also a Singer treadle sewing machine that belonged to my other grandmother. Not sure if it’s particularly valuable, but since my daughter never knew that grandmother, I don’t know if she’d care about it or not. But my granddaughter loves to play with the treadle just as I did as a kid, so maybe…
Honestly, I don’t know if there’s anything in this house my daughter would want for sentimental reasons, but once I’m gone, I won’t care. Circle of Life and all that.
We’ve lots of valuable knick-knacks, gold and silver coins, tools and equipment made by Snap-On, plus some art that is worth something but only if it can be connected to the right buyer. But my real prize is my copy of Superman #17, where Supie is beating up Hitler and Tojo on the cover. The kids are aware of the high ticket items so it’ll fall to them, if I don’t sell 'em to finance my final spree.
I have lots of prized but also valuable stuff, ranging from handmade buckskin hides to quality guns and tools to rarish books. What becomes of them after I’m gone has a huge range of possibilities with zero guarantees, from rotting in a city dump to a substantial sum of money for my kids, after quite a bit of work finding buyers etc.
At only 44, I intend to keep on enjoying my stuff for decades to come. It’s also entirely possible that ~50 years from now, books are litter, no-one uses woodworking tools for fun, and gun onwership has become a questionable rarity.
Is it in working condition? Depending on condition it could be worth several hundred dollars (I’ve seen them for sale for more than a thousand but I don’t know if they sell at that price). Parts go for $80-300.
It’s one of those things likely to be worth selling at an estate auction or on eBay.
