An auction of personal property from a deceased person's estate or a household being liquidated. Estate auctions typically include furniture, jewelry, collectibles, artwork, tools, household items, and other personal property, with average lot counts ranging from 200 to 700+ items.
How It Works in Practice
Estate auctions differ from estate sales in format: auctions use competitive bidding (live, online, or hybrid) rather than fixed pricing. This typically yields higher prices for valuable items but requires more preparation — every lot needs to be photographed, described, and cataloged. The cataloging workload is the primary bottleneck: 200–700 lots at 3–5 minutes per lot manual description time means 10–60 hours of writing. AI cataloging tools address this directly, reducing the description phase from days to hours.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long does it take to prepare an estate auction?
What is the difference between an estate auction and an estate sale?
Catalog Faster with AI
Gavelist generates professional lot descriptions from your photos in seconds — across every auction category, at any volume.