Altoona, IA - Furniture, Anyone?

So, you’ve sold your house and moved into an RV. Now, what are you going to do with all the furniture you’ve got in a 2-bedroom, 3 level home? You sure can’t bungee it to the roof of your RV and drive down the highway. And, a garage sale is probably not in the cards. Well, there are auctions, tag sales, sales to dealers, etc. We need to explore them all. But, a garage sale is probably the last thing on my mind. We wanted to find out what else was possible. Every June, West Des Moines has an antique sale and the last time we went we asked many of the dealers if they bought household goods and then gathered their cards just in case this was what we were going to do.

One of the cards was from a woman named Mary who said that she often bought everything in a house and yesterday I called her to schedule an appointment for her to look at what we had. I listed some of our furniture items, she sounded interested and then asked if I wanted to sell just those items or did I want a ‘clean out’ which would be less money for us. A ‘clean-out? Well, that’s where she takes everything, even those things she does not want and then cleans the whole house up afterwards. And, yes, it costs us more money for this.

We scheduled her for 10:00 Tuesday. Then Cathy, my sister-in-law gave us a name of a business called Lloyd’s of Des Moines, which deals in high-end furniture. We called him, he said he was in the area at 10:00 and could he come at 9:00. Ooh- that’s cutting it pretty close and I tried to call Mary to reschedule but could only leave a message.

At 9:00 Lloyd came, looked at what we had, told us how he operated and then went on about how he operates: he takes the high-end stuff to sell in his monthly sale in his store (we visited his store later in the day and here it is all stuffed with things to sell this month) and has a colleague take the lower end stuff for another kind of sale. He then tells stories of sales he’s done. I’m checking my watch, he’s telling more stories, I’m shuffling my feet, he’s telling more stories, I’m moving him towards the garage. More stories. Finally he left at 9:45.

Mary arrived exactly at 10:00. I give her the same tour of the house and we talk about how she operates. Then, in the upper level, when I showed her the things from the guess bedroom that we wanted to sell,

she tells me that she would recommend that, given the quality of our furniture, we start with a colleague of hers, Lloyd. Sure enough these two are colleagues: he takes the high-end stuff and she takes the low-end stuff. Whew. I then told her that we had just spoken with Lloyd.

Now, I really never thought of our stuff as ‘high-end’ but of good quality. My sister-in-law, Cathy, will kill me here since she sold us a great deal of what we have but, when I think of ‘high-end’ I think of the Romneys, the Rockefellers, the Kennedy’s, not Nancy and Gary from Fort Dodge, IA.

Mary actually likes the antiques the best and really liked some of our older pieces and I could tell by the way that she moved her hand over the surface that she appreciated the patina.

Looks like we have a place to sell our furniture and lots of the little stuff that we really don’t want to have a yard sale for. I think we will get the most money with the sale at Lloyd’s for our furniture since he has a monthly sale and 1700 on his e-mail list, he also has a store-front in West Des Moines and has a reputation for having good stuff.