A queasy selling of the family heirlooms | Hacker News Reader

A queasy selling of the family heirlooms

commonreader.wustl.edu

111 pointsilamont134 comments

I'm reminded of Swedish death cleaning [1]. If I don't die outright, I'll try to do as much for my daughters.

When my mother died she left behind a rather large collection of collectable dolls — not my thing, and not heirlooms for sure. (They represented I think the first time she finally had disposable income — at like age 60 or so. So she collected these things she liked.)

Regardless, I wasn't about to dump them at a local Goodwill. They meant something to her and I was quite sure she would want them to go to someone who would appreciate them as much as she did — to another doll collector I thought.

The thought of the tediousness of selling them though had me packing them up and storing them first in a storage unit in Morgan Hill for several years — even after I had moved with the wife back to the Midwaste.

A trip out to California in the van-turned-RV though and I finally brought them to Nebraska — first in my garage, then down into the basement. But again they sat for years.

This year I made a kind of resolution to "live more lightly" and so began the process of putting each doll up on eBay.

I came to learn about the dolls as I created little descriptions for the listings, tried to answer the odd question that a potential bidder had. In fact in the end I ended up keeping one of the dolls in memory of my mother. (One doll for some reason I kept coming back to look at — had a hard time imagining selling it because it was so ... stunning.) My daughters also each picked out a doll to keep in memory of grandma.

Yeah, heirlooms, etc. can be a kind of burden. As a parent myself now I make a point to let my girls know that they can toss anything of mine they wish to once I shrug off this mortal coil.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_death_cleaning

I had a kitchen fire in the middle of the night during the winter and I'm really trying to simplify things as I get set back up. Direct damage was fairly constrained to kitchen but the whole house was cleared out for cleaning due to smoke. I'm being pretty selective with what fiddly heirloom things I put back on walls in particular and have generally dumped a lot of stuff which I had out because I had it.

It's hard. I have/had some things I really like and/or are useful. But although I have a fair bit of storage space in my house, I'm taking a really close look at what will ever emerge from the box it's stored in.

> even after I had moved with the wife back to the Midwaste.

Do people call the United States midwest the "Midwaste" now? Is it meant to insult people because of where they live?

People have been making fun of the Midwest for over a century if not longer.

The only thing that annoys non-Midwesterners is that anything they think of to make fun of the Midwest with, has already been said about the Midwest by the Midwest.

Protip: the Midwest is horrible and full, go back to New York or California.

Another protip: the midwest is not every state that isn't New York or California. The South exists too. There is nothing quite like telling someone what state you are from in LA and then being asked, "What was it like growing up in the midwest?" when you didn't.

What do you mean Texas isn't in the midwest?

Which means we should keep doing it right?

Yes

>Do people call the United States midwest the "Midwaste" now? Is it meant to insult people because of where they live?

I live in the midwest and this is the first time I've seen/heard it.

We should think of mementos as going through a distillation process or something. For the original owner, the set exists as a reminder of their whole younger life—throwing parties with overcomplicated settings and finally getting into the middle class.

For the person that inherited it, they exist as a memento of childhood. Their parents big parties were only a small part. Keep a couple little pieces.

These also might have been, in some sense, insurance policies. Some of your ancestors might even have been second-class citizens in your country. The silverware might have been their best way of storing any value at all. I don’t know if I believe in spirits. But if you end up selling it off for what seems to you to be a trivial sum: that’s because your family was successful enough to not end up needing it. I think the spirits are proud.

>> But if you end up selling it off for what seems to you to be a trivial sum: that’s because your family was successful enough to not end up needing it.

That's a lovely thought!

I feel this article acutely. My mother has a house full of antiques, fine china, and silverware that she values enormously but has essentially zero market value. Most pieces wouldn’t cover my monthly electric bill.

Here’s my plan - you’re welcome to copy it:

1. Make a video documenting each piece and its story while she’s still alive. Get her to tell the family history, where items came from, what they meant to her. This preserves what actually matters.

2. Set aside exactly three pieces that genuinely speak to me. Not “might be useful someday” - just three things I actually want.

3. At the funeral, announce anyone can take anything they want to remember her by. Let family self-select what has meaning to them.

4. Donate the rest wholesale to charity. Tax deduction should be around $25k - likely more financial benefit than selling piece by piece, with infinitely less hassle.

This honors the emotional value without inheriting the burden. The video preserves family history better than storing unused objects. And it avoids the soul-crushing experience of discovering your inheritance is worth less than a tank of gas.

And "Sell on Ebay" is easy advice but, if you're not an antiques dealer, pretty uninteresting and impractical. The fact that there mostly aren't 50 cents on the dollar third-party Ebay sellers any longer should probably be a hint that it isn't a good business--and probably less so than it once was.

Why's that? What has changed that makes selling nicknacks on Ebay less worth it?

I never found selling cheapish knicknacks on Ebay very attractive financially but it seems like it's less of Ebay's business these days and just not something I'm willing to devote a lot of time and energy to.

More generally, I do think it used to be more of a flea market even if I never found it a great selling platform for cheap items.

Unless it’s your business, or it’s high value items, the dollar per hour is pitiful.

$10 item sells for $9, charge and ship it, eBay takes its cut, barf. Garage sale or just donate would be simpler.

> 1. Make a video documenting each piece and its story while she’s still alive. Get her to tell the family history, where items came from, what they meant to her. This preserves what actually matters.

The wild thing is that “what actually matters” likely becomes “what doesn’t matter” after one more generation when people who never met the person in the video inherit the video.

We are all just here for a brief time and yet we (myself certainly included!) cling so hard to attempting to leave a mark.

Most people we know only think about us for a month or so after we’re gone. Only our closest family and friends think about us longer and even then maybe not so many years later.

I spent a good amount of time digging into genealogy tools last year, tracing some family as far back to the 1500s. I felt it was a pretty mind-expanding exercise, learning about the places people lived and the journeys they must have taken. It inspired me to read from other sources about what life was like at each juncture.

Among the various records there were some that involved wills and estates—lists of who got what 200 years ago. Land, horses, money. It was fascinating in its own right, but I'll say that a video of any of those people talking about their life experience would have been absolutely incredible, if for nothing else but to conceptualize how extraordinarily the world has changed, while also feeling connection with the little human details of daily life that have likely remained much the same.

Anyone who does the digs into history almost always loves the personal letters and such over the dry records of deeds and sales, etc.

Depending on what the collection is, posting it online (after the appropriate time) may be worthwhile for some.

Or if it’s particularly local, check if the local library would like a copy.

How does a collection of stuff with "essentially zero market value" become a $25k tax deduction?

Are you perhaps not American? Here in America, tax deductions for property donated to charity are an almost universally condoned form of white collar fraud. Instead of using the actual price you could sell for, you come up with some flimsy justification for why it's actually worth 5 to 10 times as much, and then sign something claiming this which "allows" you to subtract that amount from your income.

Everyone knows it's almost always fraud, but practically no one is ever caught, so you feel like a chump unless you participate. It's taking advantage of a system with very poor enforcement. Professional accountants may even suggest it, and at times "appraisers" will play their part for a fee. Some people even try to convince themselves that it's technically legal, but I think even they know it's a lie.

The big one was cars which they eventually cracked down on, you can now only deduct what the charity sold it for (usually Pennies at auction).

I was actually surprised what a charity sold a car I donated to them gave me as a deduction. But it was when COVID was ramping up and used car values were stupid.

When getting something appraised they actually ask you “is this for sale or insurance reasons?” This never made sense to me because the insured price should be the replacement price, and that should be the same as what you would sell it for, no?

It was much later that I realized “insurance price” was “the highest value we can justify” and really meant for tax purposes.

With the current tax code in the US, a bunch of random Salvation Army donations or expenses for volunteer activities are mostly not very interesting unless you have much larger deductions as well. For specific relatively large value donations like cars, you'll typically have an independent assessment.

And that independent assessor will ask you “sale or insurance?” They are in on the scam.

In my case it was just a letter from the 501(c)(3) organization acknowledging the donation. I can't speak to how the valuation was done.

Goodwill or whoever has their own guidelines for how much they value stuff, presumably somewhat related to what they can sell it for.

Goodwill's system is that they give you pre-signed receipt and you fill in whatever you like.

That's not how it's supposed to work, but I won't claim that some of them don't do that.

>When getting something appraised they actually ask you “is this for sale or insurance reasons?” This never made sense to me because the insured price should be the replacement price, and that should be the same as what you would sell it for, no?

Obviously no. Insurance has to buy you the item new, used items sell for a fraction of the new price. Being confused by this makes me think you're new to living on earth.

Insurance doesn’t buy you anything. You make a claim and they send you a check, minus the deductible. That is it.

Regardless, you typically want the list price for your items not the used price. Do you not understand the difference?

You get whatever price you insure at. If you want a higher payout, fine. You'll be paying higher premiums though.

> 4. Donate the rest wholesale to charity. Tax deduction should be around $25k - likely more financial benefit than selling piece by piece, with infinitely less hassle.

What charity wants these antiques? Less hassle for you, I'm sure, but now a charity is going to have to deal with the stuff. Will they just throw it in the trash?

That's the reality with a lot of stuff. I do donate books to my library's book fair every year. But having gone to the book fair, I have little doubt that most of the donations will end up being pulped in the end.

Most things that people don't want don't really have value to most anyone else either. They may be recycled at some level. But mostly it's just friction to get rid of it.

This article came at a very apposite time for me, I inherited a lot of family heirlooms and have spent the last three years avoiding doing anything with them, not knowing much about where they came from or why I ended up with them. A lot of glassware and silver plate, some crockery, lamps etc.

In a fit of efficiency (when the ADHD meds kicked in, and after my wife and I getting fed up of having to squeeze past the boxes) I donated about 80% of them. And then three days ago I stumbled across a handwritten codicil to my grandmother's will where she described in painstaking detail the provenance of each piece, what it meant to her and an anecdote or two about it.

I was devastated, for a few different reasons, my grandmother specifically wanted these things to stay in the family and they'd been cherished and preserved, and I'd just given most of them away. These objects are somehow a repository of all these unprocessed feelings I have about family splits and the grief of losing family contact and continuity. And yet before I knew their stories I was judging them simply on how much I liked or didn't like them and how often I could see us using them.

If I'd discovered the codicil beforehand I'd have had a much harder time deciding what to do with it all. It sounds trite but that handwritten document is actually more of a treasure than the objects themselves.

If it makes you feel any better the hand written note is perhaps the real memento. Its got your grandmother's writing and thoughts on it. A real window to a deceased loved ones thoughts.

The stuff? Just materials passing through time and space.

This is also a reminder that if you want anyone to even PRETEND to care about your junk, give it away whilst alive!

At least then they have to find it and display it when you visit out of fear of being dewilled.

Heirlooms are one thing but collections of mass produced items are a real drain on children to dispose of. We are working thru my mother in laws storage locker, 30+ yrs in storage, currently $5000/yr. The locker was 10x10 and 100 percent stuffed. To get work room, we rented three lockers to sort the material. We now have one locker with 20 antique clocks, one locker full of porcilin lladros, and another one with furniture. And the original locker is still a challenge. So much of this should never have been acquired. And I still have my parents wedding silverware, 1958, still in the original wrappers.

A couple of events recently convinced me to never have a storage locker (though it could also be a packed garage) without some sort of exit plan. A storage locker because you're in the process of moving or need some space for outdoor gear because you live in an apartment?

Fine.

A storage locker because you have too much stuff and have no real plans to buy a second home or move somewhere bigger?

Not so fine.

The cost of these places also is pretty substantial. Really should consider what is the value of stored items if replaced with new, compared to storage cost. Especially with furniture like say beds or sofas. But why not everything else.

Does it really make sense to store. And do you actually want to reuse it. Especially if it is say some particle board and not full wood.

It's often a form of kicking the can down the road. As you write, not cheap, but easier than sorting and making decisions. But you're often just making it someone else's problem.

I held this same belief for many years, but now find myself the renter of an interminable storage unit. Its contents are almost entirely:

* Boxes for various bits of electronic gear that I may sell at some point and will net a better value if I have the original packaging. This has proven worthwhile in the past as I explored my synth hobby.

* Halloween and Christmas decorations, because my wife decorates for the holidays like an exuberant goth Clark Griswald.

The unit is 90% the latter.

I've thought long and hard that we shouldn't own more than we can hold on our property. I've even thought that maybe we should move into a bigger house with more storage in order to achieve that goal.

But then I realized that a storage unit is essentially a much cheaper version of that second sentence. Here in Seattle, uprgading to an even slightly bigger house would be an enormous increase in our mortgage, would incur a large costly move, and risks having to change schools for my kids.

Compared to that, a storage unit is a much cheaper, easier option.

I would still prefer to not have it, and I'm enough of a minimalist that I could get by fine without it. But marriage is a partnership and those decorations bring her (and the rest of our neighborhood) a lot of joy, so here we are.

It sounds like you mostly have a plan as opposed to not sure why we have all this stuff and not sure what we'll do with it whenever :-)

> So much of this should never have been acquired.

I fully agree. My mother was a compulsive buyer and holder.

My brothers and I literally had to sort, evaluate, sell, recycle thousands of items. I found stuff like a knife to cut a birthday cake with a button so that it plays the "happy birthday to you" song. Fake candles, with an electrical wire: she'd buy five identical boxes of those. Never saw them used once.

This served as a lesson to me: I'm not perfect but I'm working on it. Having lived in four different countries helped me understand minimalism too.

And, much more importantly, I definitely don't want my stuff to be a drain on my daughter. The first thing I told her: have zero regret, zero hesitation, about throwing out stuff that belonged to me. Anything that doesn't talk to you: throw it, sell it, give it. I don't care and you shouldn't either.

Pro tip: if one wants to collect stuff, at least collect things that are going to last. For example instead of collecting Labubu dolls, collect gold coins instead. Gold doesn't rust. And at least you'll pass down something valuable to your kid(s). Focus your compulsive hoarding tendencies on something that'll teach you something (gold coins are very good at teaching history). Gold has value since, literally, thousands of years. Can't afford a 1 oz coin? Save and buy a 1/10th oz instead.

I still have too much stuff. For example a real vintage arcade cab: this thing still works. Movers do actually swear when they have to move it. But at least I still play once in a while a game on it. And so does my daughter. This one is probably my worst offender but, well, it still brings me some joy so there's that.

You don't need all these items: don't be a wandering hyper-consumerist soul.

Where is a 10×10 storage locker $5k/yr? That's a bit over $400/month! About a decade ago, I rented a 10×15 storage locker for $130/month, or $1560/year. Surely inflation has not been that bad to triple the price. Perhaps it's a geographic thing.

Coastal California. Extra space storage. It’s an inherited problem but when I do the math, it’s close to $200,000 in storage costs. Crazy. We are working thru it, but nobody wants your junk, even the good stuff.

Shop around. That is much higher than the going rate.

Thank you. I know there are cheaper places, but this is an inherited problem and the storage facility is secure and dry. With luck it will be gone in six weeks.

Np. I pay just under $100/mo for a 5x10 in Santa Clara, and I know I’m also being overcharged (similar situation—too much work to move and I don’t have reason to be there more than a few more months… except that I’ve been saying that for years now).

$400/mo is highway robbery.

That is really interesting. As I mentioned, it’s an inherited problem I am working on removing. Maybe you are looking at the initial buy in rates, then they jack it up. But if things go well, it will be $0/mo next month.

I feel you. When we moved my mother into semi-assisted living, she insisted on taking all of her 'valuable' Lladros with her. She still mentions what an endowment she's leaving us. They aren't without value, but the idea that they're going to put the grandkids through college or something is Beany Baby levels of delusion.

So much of this should never have been acquired.

That can be said about so much...

LOL. Sorry. Yes, you summarized it well.

Or you can just get an estate sale company to handle everything for you, especially if it's just hoarded antiques that don't have any real sentimental value. You can even have them set the obvious family photos and such aside for you.

I come from poverty relative to the United States and never want to let go of things, electronics having been the hardest to acquire in my childhood. My wife comes from being middle-class America and correctly perceives these fast outdated things as pure carrying cost, worthless in the near future.

A lot of 10 ipads from 2015, e-waste from her employer paying to get rid of them? I greedily ask for it and she indulges me but with a warning that I have six months to find utility.

Funny. I'm the one who played so many strategy games where buildings have carrying cost. Less is more. She is right of course. It's what we do with the thing that matters more than what it is. At the Goodwill Donation Centre when I falter she says "Take a picture and give it away". Good advice.

Jerry Seinfeld, on the life of things we buy:

1. buy treadmill from Amazon with one click, delivered to your door

2. put it in the living room corner

3. after a while, put it in the garage

4. more time passes, move it to the storage unit

5. take it to the dump

Amazon could do us all a favor, and have one-click send it directly to the dump.

Sadly, this also matches my impression of the quality level of treadmills sold on Amazon. They are cheap and optimised for easy transport rather than usability.

It's because life moves faster now.

My wife started collecting fine tea sets ever since her mother-in-law asked her how she prepares tea. ("I'll show you how we prepare tea...") My wife does not drink tea. I do.

I say don't be a slave to possessions. Enjoy what you have, and what you inherit. If they become a burden, let someone else enjoy them. Life is too short to worry about things.

Time to make myself another cup.

Also, just use the stuff- anything besides silver has almost no resale value so you might as well use it, put it in the dishwasher, use them as skeet, whatever.

And what has value changes. Unless it is something really special or rare, trends do change over time. And this applies to everything.

Yeah. I have my parents' wedding china which I don't use on a daily basis. (Would rather use stoneware than china.) But had a bunch of people over, I was like, heck I have this whole cabinet full of dishes. Why not use them?

I think we evolved to hoard stuff while stuff was really hard to come by. But the industrial evolution and especially last century messed up all of that by throwing a glut of near free objects at us and many of us are just not that good at dealing with it.

My grandfather had a hoarding tendency as a consequence of growing up in the Great Depression. As a response to this, my father has a tendency to be too eager to throw things away. As a response to this, I have a hoarding tendency.

> too eager to throw things away

Curious about this. Does it mean he is throwing away things with sentimental value?

Just wanted to probe the idea of a self-proclaimed hoarder evaluating someone else’s tendency as “too eager”… by asking how you know.

My own family moved a couple of notches on the hoarder/junker scale after a few incidents of discovering that a document had been thrown away that turned out to be important.

There's no hard line. But there are some types of documents I've tossed in the fire box and other documents I put in a pile and figure after a year or two they probably don't matter.

Sounds like the anorexia-bulimia axis but for possessions instead of food

I attribute some of it to the Great Depression. My grandparents grew up during it, and it had an effect on them. They never wanted to get rid of anything because what if times got really hard again? You might be so poor that you couldn't reacquire what you got rid of.

They lived a comfortable middle class life, and that fear never materialized. But they were still prepared in case it did. And they passed that kind of thinking on to the next generation.

> It's because life moves faster now.

In a little more detail, I think that previous generations were time-rich and stuff-poor. Objects were laborious to make so people had few of them but also more time on their hands. That meant it was reasonable to obligate someone to spend a little time keeping and maintaining an object even if you weren't likely to use it often.

But now thanks to automation, globalization, and other stuff, physical objects are cheap. And thanks to an infinite number of media services who want to vacuum up every moment of our attention, time is costly. So objects come and go in our lives because it's not worth spending any time holding on to a thing you could just buy again when you need it later.

While I certainly take advantage of the convenience of cheap stuff, I don't think our current situation is really healthier.

> ("I'll show you how we prepare tea...") My wife does not drink tea. I do.

I try not to collect things. But I noticed I have an increasing number of gaiwans. Somehow, I always find an excuse to acquire another one...

(Them gaiwans are of the "I won't be too sad if the kid breaks one" variety. Props to the kid for not having broken any yet, despite regularly enjoying a variety of oolongs/pu-erhs/greens...)

I inherited a family cabin. It's nice - I'm there right now. Rural WI, fiber connection, fireplace, on a lake, etc but god does it suck up the money. I'm looking forward to giving it to someone in the next generation but I have to wait until one of them has a job that can afford the upkeep.

What is expensive about its upkeep?

In the last ten years: - roof replacement (replaced with metal so hopefully a longer-lived roof) - repaint and repair cabin, garage, shed - replace rotting deck - had to dig out a creek to replace a culvert and did proper landscaping as part of it - redo a big part of the landscaping to redirect water runoff away from the cabin while also installing drain tile - re-level the cabin and a shed where the ground had settled - converted from gas to all-electric (it's only a summer cabin so no need for gas) and so had to upgrade the electric connection (this change wasn't completely necessary but I just didn't like using gas) - replace the pump

Coming up: - convert kitchen lighting to led from halogen tubes (ballasts are failing so may as well redo it all) - repair/replace parts of the fireplace outside because it was built with indoor bricks instead of outdoor so it's breaking apart

That's just off the top of my head... I have a list of projects but I'm not getting out of my chair to get it :)

It sounds like many of these are going to have long lasting effects. That person that inherits from you will wonder why you thought it was so expensive. Good job :)

To be fair, many of these are upgrades, not just repairs. Sounds like a lovely property though.

Living in the city here... if you don't mow your lawn every week (due to long covid), you end up with a forest of volunteer trees, and a notice from the city. Everything has a maintenance cost, and it can be huge!

It's not winterized so it would work as a spring to fall rental. However the land and cabin and neighboring land have been in our family for over 100 years and so there's lots of family-related stuff like artwork, antiques, etc that we'd have to put in storage. Instead I let people in the family use it for free.

Ah, so comparing https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45160374 the cabin is actually doing the role of a storage unit.

There's something similar going on with my grandmother's house, which my mother is hanging on to but no longer going to use as a holiday home quite so often now she's passed her 80th birthday. It has in it a piano (archetypal item that costs more to move, let alone store, than it's worth) and, yes, a set of china and wedding silverware.

Property Tax?

That sounds like it could be an excellent rental property.

So why not sell it?

My ILs have traveled the world and have a home full of things they've purchased and loved. My FIL's parents passed away about 15 years ago. It took my FIL years to go through all that stuff and figure out what to do with it.

They've been frank with us - they love their stuff, none of it is worth the time and effort it would take appraise and sell it, and we should pick anything we like and donate the rests.

I think it was kindly done. You don't have to give away your cherished possessions as long as you free your heirs from the guilt of getting rid of it. I love my shelves full of books, but they are meaningful only to me. The kids can take them to the charity or the library or the recycling place as far as I'm concerned.

No mention of size of houses either. I have great grandparents who had farms, parents with big 4 bed houses who have now passed. Meanwhile I'm in a two bedroom with kids. Not much room for that grand piano, antiques & book collections.

That may be an issue in some HCOL areas, but the average size of new houses has been steadily increasing for decades.

https://247wallst.com/special-report/2016/05/25/the-size-of-...

Having gone through this exercise recently, silver is typically only valuable if it’s not plated and then only for the metal. Unless you have some really special pattern that someone else wants, it will be melted down for other uses.

Old China patterns are very hard to sell as well. Younger people have no interest in things which can’t go in a microwave and need to be hand washed.

And - having also gone through it - there are legitimate lead concerns with old china. I sold my family's mostly for that reason. Kept the silver for emotional reasons but still haven't used it yet. Probably a sign there.

Not to mention uranium. ;-)

I've got the Fiesta Ware bowl that my mom kept along with her Geiger counter, until she moved from her house to a small apartment.

And other pottery. My parent brought back literally suitcases full of glazed pottery from Mexico when they had a house there. I've disposed of most of it.

This issue looms large in my family. My grandparents traveled the world in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War and collected astonishingly large quantities of finely crafted art and heirlooms that they had been warehousing until they died. My parents' generation inherited literal housefuls of this stuff but much of it is of a nature that it would be criminal to dump it in the trash.

A unique challenge of our case is the legal status of some of these goods. For example, we have enough very fine elephant ivory artwork to fill entire storage units.

Very interesting read. As someone who inherited the ancestors house which is 90+ years old, its really a fascinating read.

I have often observed that my dad's sisters and himself don't care enough about a lot of things that are old in our house. Mostly because they grew up seeing it or grew up with their parents obsessing over it.

But I wonder, what would the author's younger generation think about it? Because we didn't grew up with it. Everything around us is disposable. Lifeless. Valueless. We dispose the plates that we eat and things we have like we watch a new movie in Netflix.

So maybe her younger generation sees it from a different light? Cos every other night, they eat from disposable plates. Her generation can't buy the finesse the old generation things has (for things that are heirloom worth ofcourse).

My dad reads his newspaper in a chair which was auctioned out by the British after world war 2 financial troubles. My great grandfather bought it. And I sleep in in my great grandfather's bed. Both not things to care or is valued by my mom and dad. But very surreal whenever I think about it. We don't always have to go new.

Maybe give another generation chance to connect. Tell the stories about it to them. They maybe fascinated cos it's new with history to them while it was a day to day thing for the author herself?

Interesting read! Thank you.

family Heirlooms are basically junk as far as resell goes. many are surprised to learn grandma's cutlery or trinkets isn't worth the price paid to apprise it. This goes for collectables in general. People think that if their collectables maybe go up that they made a good deal, but they would have been way better off putting the money in the S&P 500.

It could be worse, you could have spent money to store a bunch of furniture or other things you'll never use for a decade, out of a sense of obligation to someone who isn't around anymore to tell you how stupid you're being, and just get rid of it.

8500+ ft² Victorian, with every last thing to fill it in style, and every last thing that was purchased along the way, functional, identifiable, or niether, objects going back generations, 2~300 lbs of photos and negatives 2500 + books, very large furniture,and mountains of pure junk in a never emptyied out in 165 years attic.12 or more full pickup loads to the dump, and 3 or 4 to the local hospital donation, thrift store.

Both parents in a care home, together and I am working to be able to take them back to the house for day trips, so installing a wheelchair bathroom, and a "day suite" off the kitchen selling whatever is worth cash, and has no real sentimental value to pay for it all.

When we bought our house, we offered to buy it as-is so the owners wouldn't have to sort through it. This may have helped our bid win even if it wasn't the highest. It was actually pretty interesting looking through the lives of the previous owners.

I dread having to sift through my parents house. My mom also loved her silver and China - polishing it was a chore that we could pick up as kids to earn a few bucks. The furniture especially is still in pretty good condition and is also just so much better made, with much better wood, but is in the completely the wrong style for our home.

I am from a European country with a long… very long history, some of the family heirlooms date back to Byzantium. I don’t live in that country anymore, and I live in terror of inheriting them… I could give them to a museum, yet asides from that feeling like a betrayal, I know it will mostly just sit in a box till it rots away. Maybe making it out to an exhibit once per 30 years. I feel like we are all losing interest in our past.

Don't many museums accept items on loan? Which is to say, they'll display them for an agreed upon time and return them rather than claim ownership?

That doesn't solve the problem of where to put it in the long term.

Ostensibly, you could keep loaning them out...

If the item is truly antique and display worthy, it can be accepted in “permanent loan.”

Most of the art you see in museums is technically on permanent loan.

How much of it can you mount on a wall? Wall mounted artifacts and art require trivial maintenance effort and don't clutter up the floor, while honoring those objects and making them visible and enjoyable.

This is the comment on here I most relate to myself. I'm also from a family with old roots, although our family heirlooms date back only to the Fourth Crusade at earliest. My mother passed away a few years ago, and I was made responsible for an awful lot of items that people would generally be surprised to find outside of a museum.

So, yeah, it's a lot of mixed feelings. There are certain things that it's easy to know what to do with. For example, I inherited a box, which is worth maybe $1k at most on the market, but which was part of a story which has been passed down in my family for 800 years. It's really nice to be able to finish that story with "and we still have the box." So, yeah, its easy to know I'm never getting rid of that one.

But there are other things that I kinda wish I didn't have to take care of. Now I have at least four more colonial dressers than I have room for. Marie Kondo would say that if it doesn't give me joy, I should get rid of it. And they don't give me joy. But getting rid of something that has been in my family for 300 years just because it doesn't fit in my house right now, that would give me guilt. I'm not sure that's healthy, but it's true.

I grew up in a house that was a lot like a museum, full of antiques, don't touch, hey that's older than the US, don't play on that. My mother did too. I don't know if that was always the best environment for a kid, but it did teach me a reverence for the past and for history.

So, I try to be a good custodian of the past. Visitors to my house might not know much about Ras Gugsa, Mother Seton, or Boudwyn of Constantinople, but I have interesting items on display that often prompt questions, so I can then tell stories. It's the other things, the dressers and silver chafing dishes, that are a burden rather than a privilege to have. I'm not sure how to have one without the other.

One thing that I've noticed is that a lot of the more guilt-burdensome items, not just for me but for people in general, are those things that used to be valuable and prestigious but aren't anymore. In 1920, a top hat or silver chafing dish showed you had class. Now, those things don't signify anything. But their importance to our ancestors of a previous time lingers on a bit. We feel like even though they are worth little that they should be worth more somehow. I suspect that in a few generations our grandkids' generation will be stressing over what to do with our Rolex watches and Coach bags.

A similar piece with an opposite take away: https://thespectator.com/life/home-for-the-holidays-rediscov... (https://archive.is/uBQMW)

Sigh, sorry to the author that your mom wasn’t into mid-century design.

Silver is anti microbial; eating on silver may well be very beneficial.

Copper has the same effect.

Brass tableware would be the least expensive material for this purpose.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligodynamic_effect

Brass will leach lead into food. I would not be shocked if old Stirling didn’t either.

Harmful microbes being on our plates rather than within the food we eat is not a common vector of disease, unless you tend to reuse your plates without washing them in between.

In the latter case, there's a much less expensive option available to improve your health instead of buying silver plates...

Not all bacteria are harmful. Most of us would probably be better off consuming a wider variety of it.

It is however an absolute pain to keep clean.

Since silver is important in making the front contacts of solar cells, sell that old unused silverware blackening in the drawer and help replace fossil fuels.

Worried what the ghost of granny will think? Ghosts don't exist.

Beep boop, human feelings are illogical.

The funny thing is that the "logical argument" is also emotional. "Your silver is tarnishing because you don't need or even want it" and "don't you care about the climate, we need solar panels to be 0.1% cheaper" are playing with emotions.

Most individual people can only hope to make a minuscule difference for the climate. I don’t think it’s really irrational to try to make that 0.1% difference, just a recognition of our limitations.

I think 0.1% is an exaggeration, and the price drop would be even less. The amount of silver even in all the silverware put together is dwarfed by other uses, even investment (which is stacking it in a vault for future use). The point is that depriving yourself of sentimental objects just because you imagine some green outcome is silly. The absolute most environmentally friendly use for the silverware is to put it in the hands of someone who WANTS silverware, because of the substantial costs required to make it in the first place PLUS the costs of remanufacturing it into other objects (which you also have to assume in the transfer to your proposed use).

The impact of everyone selling their silverware on solar panel prices (and probably even bullion prices) would be so miniscule that it doesn't even matter. So don't destroy your culturally significant artifacts because of such absurd hypotheticals as "I'm making the world a better place by doing this"...

Yes, by all means allow the "culturally significant artifacts" to sit unused, taking up space, until your estate sale where they will be purchased for their scrap value.

The attachment to these things is a distant echo of when they were signs of social status, when maybe 1% of households, the rich ones, would have silver flatware (and the servants to keep it polished.) Now? They are superfluous matter than serves to weight down our lives.

You might think this is "superfluous matter" but it is literally physical wealth in your hand, on top of being historically significant (in some cases). It is still probably only owned and used by the top 1%.

The bottom line is, you should sell silver if you feel like the sale price is worth it, or you personally hate it. Not because you dream of solar panels and what not, that hardly use much of it at all. As with most manufactured goods, it is better to sell silverware to continue to be used as silverware, than to scrap it.

You'd do better to sell the silver and invest in things that actually produce wealth.

Perhaps. Or you could lose money. That is the difference between having wealth and investing.

If you want to keep silver as wealth, buy actual silver coins and bars. Not dinnerware.

The top 1% own ETF shares, and the top 0.001% own industries.

Sterling silver is more pure than most constitutional silver coins (which is exactly why they are not more pure; the mint does not want the coins melted constantly). If you want to own a bunch of silver for investment and also enjoy having it, there's nothing wrong with having some of it in dinnerware.

> literally physical wealth in your hand

In almost all cases of "heirlooms", the area of land taken up by the object is worth more than the object. Other than gold, very little stuff has enough value density.

That is the wrong way to think about it. Many places have buildings where the structure costs less than the land it's on. You won't get rid of your car because of the land under it. The space required for a box of silverware is similar to a small pack of toilet paper. Shall we throw that out too?

In many such places people buy houses explicitly to tear them down and build something better.

We'd be seeing even more of that if zoning didn't restrict it.

"Better" is a subjective judgement. Maybe zoning has drawbacks but letting people do what they want with their property is important. If you have something better to do with it, go persuade them and pay them to let you enact a different plan.

Funny enough, this sort of thing is _usually_ true. Civilians doing things in some sort of vaguely coordinated mass movement is typically a very weak force vs any industrial process. See, for example, WWII scrap drives, which were far more invasive and not terribly effective, even for easily recycled materials like aluminum. https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/41736/were-worl...

Modern industrial forces are generally far, far more powerful than we realize. The great Falun mine, jewel of Sweden, producer of 2/3rds of all Europe's copper, builder of empires, produced 3,000 tons/year at its absolute peak; today, current copper production is quite mechanized and produces 18.3M tons/year. There is approximately nothing we can do by hand, or with our household items, that matches the power of industry.

But silver, with its small production, is a bit of an outlier. Worldwide silver production is only 25k metric tons/year, so if each of 131 million US households has a 52-piece set of .925 sterling silver at 1 troy oz sterling silver/piece, that is 0.925 * 52 piece * 1 troy oz/piece * 31.1g/troy oz * 131 million or 196k metric tons. Obviously nowhere near every household will have a full 52-pc set, some will have none and some will have larger sets, but if even 1/4 of households sell just one set, that is two entire years of worldwide silver production; the effects would be massive.

I doubt most households even have a 52 piece set of stainless steel flatware, much less silverware. I doubt that even 1 in 10 has any real silverware enough to set a table of 4.

You are right about silver production but the cost of silver is negligible in any product except for actual silver jewelry and tableware. It is not worth badgering people to part with precious personal items to save $0.50 per solar panel or some shit. The price of silver is $41 per troy oz, or a little over a dollar per gram. Getting rid of silver for this reason is like getting rid of diamond jewelry because someone could use those diamonds to make high-precision cutting equipment for manufacture of EVs and solar panels. Everything you touch on a daily basis can be used for something else. You don't need to feel guilty because someone else might want it more. The market system we have ensures that if someone else wants it more than you, for a sufficiently good reason, they can prove it by simply buying it at the asking price.

Oh, don't get me wrong, I'm not making any sort of judgments about recycling your family heirlooms to feed industrial demand. None of these schemes would have a terribly substantial effect in the long term. Just pointing out that while typically this sort of thing is hilariously ineffective and rounds to zero, this specific case is very unique and people do own a market-distorting amount of silver - yes, even if it's only one in ten households with a set.

>someone could use those diamonds to make high-precision cutting equipment

Funny enough, I actually do use monocrystalline diamond tooling (not for EVs or solar panels.) I would never tell someone to sell their family jewels, and they would almost certainly get pennies on the dollar if they tried.

> but the cost of silver is negligible in any product except for actual silver jewelry and tableware.

I understand it's somewhere in the neighborhood 10% of the production cost of a PV module.

> I doubt most households even have a 52 piece set of stainless steel flatware, much less silverware.

I just went and counted our stainless steel set: 79 pieces.

Actual silverware became obsolete in 1913 with the invention of stainless steel. That people keep it around is almost pathological.

Good for you? Most flatware is sold in a set for four seats and not with 4 different kinds of forks and spoons. One fork, two kinds of spoons, and a blunt knife times 4 seats is 16 pieces. Steak knives are sold separate, and those are almost never silver.

You might say that porcelain made earthenware obsolete, cheap glass makes porcelain obsolete, or plastic makes everything obsolete, or stainless is chemically better than everything else. People like what they like. I think you all have a pathological obsession with this issue and telling people that their choices suck lol.

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