Liquidating Estates-A labor of love?

 I’m 62, and like most of you, getting older by the SECOND. And like every one of you you have a ton of friends who have relatives that are modelers, but they, themselves are not. When their fathers or grandfathers, or husbands pass away your friends come to you, because you’re a train guy, you know EVERYTHING. I swear, if you want to get back at your wife, take that one last parting shot from the grave, then have a huge train collection coupled with a huge layout. Your heirs are SCREWED!

So several years ago I get a call from a friends wife, can I help. She has to be out in 30 days, and her husband has a 40 x40 purpose built building with a layout and a collection spanning four scales!

I packed the entire thing up and sold it all off at swap meets. I think I got her $15000 in cash over two years, which amounted to about 30 cents on the dollar.  While I’m collating all this stuff, and what modeler doesn’t have enough “Project” cars to last three lifetimes, I end up with a ton of the collection, that I paid for. 

I spent two years selling that off and I swear to GOD on my way back from the swap meet where I sold the last item, I get a call. Another friend has an estate they want me to sell, and they are having it shipped to my house, it should be there about now!

I was swimming through those boxes for another couple years. 

It’s a labor of love. You’re not going to profit from it. In the end no matter what you’re going to be stuck with a ton of stuff you neither need nor want. In one case I GAVE four atlas ATSF S-4 switchers from an estate, to a friend in Kansas City in order to just get rid of them. I paid the postage, so I took a loss. Two years later he moved, and mailed them back to me!

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