Hoarder's House of Dolls

Last summer my company was contracted to sell the contents of a collector's home - or, more accurately, to liquidate a hoarder's house.

By the time I'd arrived on the scene, the family had already emptied the main floor, making my job simpler, right? WRONG! The main floor may have been empty, but the basement certainly wasn't, and that's where the fun began.

For three weeks we painfully dug through the 2,000 square-foot basement, sometimes sleeping there, gradually bringing upstairs the treasures(?) from the depths of the basement. By the time we were done we'd completely filled the upstairs, and still had a basement full of stuff - essentially two floors stuffed with articles for sale. It was scary.

A partial list included a half-dozen polka accordians, twelve short-wave radios, 1,000 articles of clothing, 250 cameras, roughly 400 pieces of china, 3,000 LP records, 2,000 books, 100 pairs of shoes, dozens of power tools many still in boxes, 150 square feet of Christmas decorations, eight typewriters, ten movie projectors, 200 VHS tapes, a dozen wool carpets, dozens of lamps, six telescopes, and, of course, over 300 dolls.

We had a kitchen sink to sell, and the Christmas decorations even included a partridge in a pear tree!

It took three days of continuous selling to make a dent in all of this, and buyers would buy, go away, come back, buy more, go away again, then come back for more. They'd fill boxes with stuff, take it home, and bring the empty boxes back to fill over and over again - we came to know everyone by name.

"100,000 Items for Sale!" our newspaper ads proudly proclaimed, making us a local sensation for a week, and a legend for a month or more. We sold and sold and sold. Through all of this, we had only one complaint, that coming from some sharp-eyed customer who coyly quipped "There's no way there's 100,000 items for sale in here! It's more like 300,000!"

Hmmm. No wonder I was tired!