What’s the difference between a GARAGE SALE, A TAG SALE, AN ESTATE SALE?

We’ve been antique dealers for 25 years and have spent the better part of those years going to in-home sales of household goods.The area we live in has “great pickings” for the garage sale fan. On any given weekend, there are hundreds of sales to choose from within a 20 mile radius of our home. There are many different types of sales, however … and the type and quality of goods differs greatly in these types of sales.

There are actually four basic types of household sales.

1. A Garage Sale is a sale of someone’s unwanted household items. Most often held in somebody’s garage or driveway, garage sales sell cookware, utensils, smaller pieces of furniture, children’s cast off toys and clothing, old tools, etc. Garage sales can often yield treasures when households are selling things from the attic or basement that belonged to their parents or grandparents. Garage sales can be very unpredictable in the kinds of items they have and can yield terrific things for very little money. A variation on the Garage Sale is the Yard Sale which usually has more items for sale than a garage sale so it spills out into someone’s entire yard.
2. A Moving Sale usually contains the partial … and sometimes even the entire contents of a home. Moving is expensive and many people sell a large percentage of their possessions rather than move them. Moving sales can yield terrific pieces … often large pieces of furniture that would be very costly to move.
3. An Estate Sale is easily defined – it is the sale of the goods from an estate … i.e., someone who has died. Estate sales often yield the greatest treasures of all because they contain the collections of a lifetime. They will sell the possessions of an elderly person and sometimes the property of that person’s parents and grandparents. Estate sales often yield terrific antiques that are coming on the resale market for the first time. As a rule, Estate sales are run by professionals, who have been contracted by the family or by the estate's executors. These estate sale professionals will go through all of the deceased’s possessions, appraise their value, clean them up, arrange their display and price everything that will go into the sale. Further, they will absorb the expense of advertising the sale and manage the actual sale itself (including difficult tasks like crowd control). 
4. A Tag Sale is sort of a hybrid between a Garage sale and an Estate Sale. This is usually a sale of someone’s property (someone who is alive!) that is of higher quality than what you’d find at a garage sale. Generally Tag Sales are managed by professionals and will contain quality furniture and collectibles and often important antiques.

We sometimes get frustrated when we go to a sale that is advertised as a “Tag Sale” – which creates the expectation of valuable antiques … only to get there and find a few card tables set up with someone’s cast off collection of widgets… a few old purses … their son’s old Pokemon cards … some old LPs and videos and some used kitchenware.  However, the opposite of that has also worked to our benefit -- we’ve attended sales that were advertised as Garage Sales only to find that Grandma had recently passed and her designer signed 1930s/40s costume jewelry was being sold, strewn on a sheet on the front yard and priced at 25 cents apiece! 

Our advice to anyone who is going to hold any of these types of sales … is to learn the difference between the types of sales and, when you are advertising them or putting up signs, bill them correctly.  It will unquestionably help your sale if you do that. Further, if you think you have items that you think might have value, it will benefit you to hire a professional estate/tag sale manager. Whatever fees they take will be more than made up for in the added money your sale will earn.

Thanks for reading our article.  If you found it interesting, please take a minute to click the Yes button below and please check our auctions and see the kinds of treasures we've found in our own local garage/yard/estate/tag sales!