Is There Any Recourse Against People That Steal from Estate Sales

Last week I had an estate sale of my mother's and aunt's items and had more things stolen than I sold including costume jewelry and rare European art glass. When I discussed this with people I know, they said when you have a sale like that, you take your own chances and since I can't prove who took these things, I have no recourse. I have to do sales on my own and sometimes my attention is divided between things outside and inside if a lot of people stop at once and they are all over, but no one I know offers to help me with my sales.

What state are you in?

One person can not handle a house wide estate sale as you've realized.

If you know who stole the items, call the police.

If you don't know who took anything, it's just like when people steal from a store. It's a loss.


Have you considerd hiring somebody to help you with your auctions? I hope you don't expect people to work for free.

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Quoting flyingron

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What state are you in?

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New York

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Quoting debodun

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Last week I had an estate sale of my mother's and aunt's items....

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Exactly what do you mean by "estate sale"? If you are the administrator of the estates, and are running a sale in that capacity, the estate can hold you responsible for items lost to theft as the result of an improperly managed sale.

If you are simply calling a sale of your own items, previously inherited from your mother and aunt, an "estate sale", then you can consider other options -- such as smaller sales that you can appropriately monitor, finding a way to convince your friends and family to help out, or hiring people to assist you.