You Inherited a Collection. Here's Where to Start.

Estate collections come to us in tubs, in binders, sometimes in the original shoeboxes. The person who knew what everything was is gone, and the family is left guessing which box is the valuable one. If that's you, here is the process we walk families through.

First rule: don't sell anything for thirty days. Grief and a garage full of boxes make 'just take it all' offers feel like relief. Wholesale buyers know this. The bulk offer you get on day three is almost always a fraction of what the top five items alone are worth.

Photograph everything in groups — a binder page at a time, a shelf at a time. You're not cataloguing yet, you're making a record that exists outside the garage. If a dispute or a break-in happens later, those photos are your inventory.

Then find the tells that something deserves individual attention: anything already in a graded slab, anything in a screw-down or magnetic case (someone thought it was special), sealed boxes of anything, handwritten inventories, and the items that were displayed rather than stored. Appraise those individually — that's exactly what our AI appraiser is for, and the per-item cost is a rounding error against one mispriced item.

Finally: the collection was loved. Selling it well is not a betrayal — it's the last act of taking it seriously. Take the time to know what you have, seal and certify the pieces that matter, and sell from knowledge, never from exhaustion.