Estate Sale - $50 for 50 Pounds of Jewelry

If you have read my blog for long, you know that I search second hand stores and some yard sales looking for jewelry for emergency preparedness. 
 
I have explained why I do this and if you click here, you can read about how it started.  The video at the top is me explaining why and how I do it.

Here is a post about finding silverware or other silver items.

Here is a post showing the miniature markings to look for on gold. 
Here is a similar post showing a few different types of markings on different types of jewelry.


I have several more posts about finding some good deals etc if you want to search for them, type "gold" or "jewelry" in the search box at the bottom of my home page to find those. 

I waned to share with you what I found at an estate sale a few weeks ago. 

There was a trailer that someone lived in and she passed away. She was a bit of a hoarder as she had all sorts of picture frames, bags and bags of jewelry and many glass items.

There were a few of us going through some of the jewelry and they kept finding more bags in the house and bringing them out. I finally got tired of sifting through the bags and just offered them $50 for all of it. 


I had seen some silver in them and hoped to find some gold as well but it was taking forever and people were grabbing stuff so I figured if I took it all, I could sort it at my own pace and put it in little bags for other uses. 

The bags are sold at Walmart in the jewelry / craft section for $1 for 100 bags. They have four sizes. I usually purchase several bags when they have them as they are always out for some reason. 
It took me three evenings to sort through the box of stuff I got. 

The box weighed about fifty pounds. It was so heavy and very crazy how much jewelry she had in many bags. I could see that the family was overwhelmed with the amount of stuff she had and I have to say I was a bit overwhelmed as well.
 
I ran out of the bags I had and have been checking every few days to purchase more to finish up bagging them. 

I had the girls go through it all at Easter taking what they wanted. (Click here for a post where I show how they get to pick as I have gotten lots of jewelry over the years.) I then put out a table of them at our reunion this week and allowed anyone to take what they wanted. 
 
I sorted the jewelry into piles. Watches, pins, clip on earrings, costumes jewelry and jewelry I thought the girls would like. 
I also found some coins in the box. I put them into my "found" jar.  

Click here to read my first post about that.  Here is a more currant total of my found money jar. 

Here is a craft we did with watches bought in bags.  

Here is a craft for Halloween decorations where we used jewelry we got in bags. 

Here is a link to where my friend makes custom mirrors using old jewelry etc. 

Here is how I gave away 3 huge grocery sacks of jewelry out at girls camp last year allowing the girls to take any thing they wanted out of the "Dwarves Treasure Chest."

The second through fourth picture show all the gold and silver that I got out of the box from the estate sale. One of the gold rings still has the price tag on it for $38 so paying $50 for the box was a huge deal. Just the one gold necklaces is worth more than the $50 so all in all, it was a super deal as I got lots of silver as well.