House Clearance in Mount Hawke, Cornwall, The Egg Cup Collection

A full house clearance in Mount Hawke, near Redruth, in a property that turned out to hold an extraordinary collection: egg cups, vintage ceramics and decorative antiques gathered over a lifetime.

A collection changes how a clearance is run. The instinct on an ordinary job is to work room by room and load as you go. Here we slowed down, because a shelf of egg cups is either forty pounds of ceramics or something a specialist buyer will travel for, and you cannot tell which from the doorway. Even the bedrooms had display shelves on the walls alongside the ordinary furniture, a divan bed, a bedside cabinet, flat pack units and framed pictures.

Every room was cleared: conservatory, lounge, bedrooms, kitchen and garage. The collection was sorted and catalogued rather than boxed indiscriminately, and the pieces that warranted it went to our own dedicated auction. Where items are sold on behalf of a family, the proceeds come back to them after the sale closes, separately from the general resale value that comes off the clearance cost.

The rest followed the usual route. Furniture and household goods to reuse and local charities, ceramics and glass separated for recycling, and only the remainder to licensed disposal with a waste transfer note.

If you are clearing a property in Mount Hawke, St Agnes, Redruth or Porthtowan and there is a collection in it, tell us before the day. It often changes what the clearance is worth, and occasionally it changes it a great deal.