Tell us about the collection before the day. It often changes what the clearance is worth, and occasionally it changes it a great deal.
We cleared a house in Mount Hawke, near Redruth, that turned out to hold an extraordinary one: egg cups, vintage ceramics and decorative antiques gathered over a lifetime. Not a few shelves. A collection, in the proper sense, built deliberately over decades.
A collection changes how the job runs
The instinct on an ordinary clearance is to work room by room and load as you go. Here we slowed right down, because a shelf of egg cups is either forty pounds of ceramics or something a specialist buyer will travel across the country 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 in the end, conservatory, lounge, bedrooms, kitchen and garage, but the collection was sorted and catalogued rather than boxed indiscriminately.
That takes longer. It is also the only way to find out what something is worth, and on this job it was worth doing.
Where the money goes
The pieces that warranted it went to our own dedicated auction. This is the part people are often unclear about, so it is worth setting out plainly.
Where items are sold on behalf of a family, the proceeds come back to them after the sale closes. That is separate from the general resale value we recover during a clearance, which comes straight off the cost of the job. Two different things, and you should expect both to be explained to you before anyone loads a van.
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, say so when you call. Even if you think it is worth nothing.