Doug Jennings and his wife Beverly run Blue Goose Estate Sales. Doug is a retired Illinois State University professor. The Jennings also are lifelong antique fans.
Oddly enough, the pandemic that has hurt so many other businesses actually increased theirs.
“It's been a little bit more stable during COVID. Antique shows pretty much disappeared for 2 1/2 years. It kind of filled the void,” said Doug Jennings. “What we did early on in COVID, and still do it quite a bit, is we run appointments only. Then we only get a few people in the house at a particular moment. And so that remains a little safer.”
Going through people's things and finding treasures and doing research on what might or might not be valuable is fun, he said, but even though they are dealing with objects of people who have died, it is still a people business. Sorting things is a delicate thing, said Jennings. It requires trust from grieving family members.
“There has to be this respect that we provide to the audience, because you're going through people's lifelong collections."Doug Jennings
“There has to be this respect that we provide to the audience because you're going through people's lifelong collections," he said. "And the interesting part of it is you get to establish relationships through the items and through the clients themselves. We've kept in touch with a number of the clients over the years.”
He said they have to find out about the family and their preferences in the interview process to make sure they don’t sell something the family overlooked.
“All of a sudden we find things they thought that they had pulled out. We always make two piles, the one that we're going to sell for them, because they've approved that. And then the things that go back to the family,” said Jennings.
Estate sellers such as Blue Goose, Tamara’s Estate Sales, M and K or any of the several others operating in McLean County hear from family members about the positives and the negatives of the people whose things they are cleaning out of homes.
“We had a sale two years ago that involved dog ashes. We had a time talking about those dog ashes, and what should be done, what should not be done. It's just being able to talk that over with them,” said Jennings, adding there are generational differences in how people treat their things.
Some keep everything. He said those people were impacted by the Great Depression; either they lived through it or their parents did.
“They really wanted to keep everything they ever had, and did not want to discard it. We've been in the houses like that, which took us five weeks to clear out,” said Jennings. “Then there are those who like to acquire things. We got into a house where we found three cameras that were identical. And two of them still in the box.”
Sometimes, they find rarities in odd places.
“Digging through a jar of things, all of a sudden that 1850s gold coin shows up. We've had oriental rugs that were very valuable that were rolled up in the attic. We were doing a sale up by Kappa. The house hadn't been occupied for over 10 years. As they had acquired new furniture, they moved the old furniture down into the basement. And it was a kind of a wet storage area in a basement got wet all the time. And so the furniture was just depreciating, falling apart from the wetness, but what we knew is that we had to look. And so were prying open drawers. And there's a whole bunch of silver dollars from the 1800s that came out of that particular dresser,” said Jennings.
There also are collectibles, particularly old toys, though fashions change — sometimes abruptly.
“People like to collect from their childhood. As we keep aging, that which gets collected also keeps changing,” said Jennings.
A number of years ago, Beanie Babies were hot. Now, it's hard to give them away, said Jennings. Fine china was something people liked to have. Today, millennials and Gen X's are not as interested in things that can't go through the dishwasher or can't be just reused easily, said Jennings.
Avon collectibles and Longaberger baskets are on the list of formerly fashionable items, but they're out of favor, too. Jennings said so far, he has not seen a comeback on anything that has gone past peak and into a valley.
He said popular media tends to influence things on the way up. The show "American Pickers," for instance, likes old advertising and signage. And that trend has, so far, lasted about six years.
“At a house in Eureka halfway through the sale, I decided to walk the property one more time. Behind some bushes behind the garage I pulled out an old oil company gas sign that we did not know was there. By the time I walked it from the garage up to the sale, I had it sold,” said Jennings.
Vintage games are good at the moment as well.
“My son Nathan likes the gaming and the electronics. That's his specialty area. As we worked through one house in east Bloomington, he found a room just loaded with vintage gaming. He probably sold more from that one room than we did the rest of the house,” said Doug Jennings. “Early Pac-Man and Nintendo games that came along early are very, very strong.”
The way people collect also has changed generationally. People in their 50s and up tend to like small tchotchkes and figurines. Younger people tend to collect in a theme, say mid-century modern.
“They work really hard at that. They're decorating their house in that theme,” said Jennings.
By the way, the name for his firm Blue Goose, Jennings said, came from old wooden fruit crates made by a California company that are still found in people's homes from time to time.
