A friend of mine always says that Estate Sales are just fancy garage sales and he could not be farther from the truth. Good estate sale companies have many contacts and experience in selling the many possessions that seniors collect throughout the years. When I interview estate sale contacts I am always amazed on the items they see as "valuable" and some items I would see as "high worth" have little if any value.
"We can't believe how much we received from the estate sale profits. We paid for Mom & Dad's move to the senior living facility and added some $ to their savings which is great and the estate sale comapany did the work"
Most seniors have one or two shoeboxes of old photos (before digital cameras) and old home movies in one format or another. You will be amazed on how well some of the old photos look digitized and you can then do so many things with them: photo books, calendars, and my favorite is to use them as background on your TV during holidays (explanation below). Old videos are treasures but are hard to transfer yourself and most national retailers (Costco, Wal-Mart, Walgreens, etc.) can transfer old videos into DVD’s.
Two Ways to preserve your old photos
Once you have the old photos converted into a digital format you should then download them into a website like Picasa (Google) and this way you can view them via a Media Player (Roku, Apple TV, Fire TV, etc.) on your TV. This is actually rather easy if you have a personal computer, media player and high speed internet. Your grandkids (and yourselves) will then enjoy the use of the media player that is now set up. Netflix is included in all of the major media players and is priced under $10 per month with many commercial free movies and episodes of TV programs.
Golden Nugget: “The Geek Squad” is a Best Buy service that makes house calls and is very reasonably priced. They can easily sets up wireless internet, media players and can show you how to use them. There are other local companies that will also do this service. AARP announced in 2015 that their members could access Geek Squad discounts up to $30.
6 minute YouTube Video describing the mechanics of a great estate sale.
