I know a lot of you all have gone through or at least considered this over the years: how to get rid of decades worth of accumulation? What a huge hassle!
I recently agreed to help an older acquaintance sort and sell off a lot of his stuff (regretting that now), and another friend had a health scare and has been asking me what to do with his gun collection.
He wants to seriously downsize his collection but doesn't know how to do it, and he also wants top dollar. He's one who can't stand the thought of taking a loss. I told him about the options I'm aware of: consignment at a local gun shop, Gunbroker, forums, gun shows, etc., and their pros and cons in terms of cost and time. He wants me to help him get a couple tables at a gun show to sell them, but I have a feeling that would be a lot of work with questionable results. I told him that getting top dollar would mean a lot of time and work, and to sell them all quickly would mean cutting prices. I just don't have the time or energy at this point to help him much, unfortunately, so he's on his own for now.
I've been helping another friend go through and sell off his accumulation of reloading stuff, and I've sure learned that I need to be able to say no when asked in the future. I can really see why people often sell stuff like this cheap as an estate sale. It just takes so much work to sort, come up with prices, list for sale, take payment, ship, etc.. I'm starting to think it's really not worth it at all.
All this has me convinced to curb my pack-rat tendencies, stop accumulating, and slowly start selling and reducing now, and focus on what's actually important in life. Hobbies are great, but obsessions not so much. I need to spend less time fiddling with old guns, and more time with my kids before they all fly the coop.
Anyhow, I suspect that I'm not the only one who has had these thoughts. Any ideas on how to effectively balance life and hobbies as one gets older? When you're young, you have time for toys but no money. A little older and we're usually working long hours, raising a family, paying bills,etc, and don't have a lot of time or money for toys. As we get older, we tend to have more resources and accumulate stuff we want. When one retires they have more time, but as the years continue to pass (from what I've see; I'm not there yet) interest wanes and you start to wonder what to do with all this stuff. I'm thinking that I want to start addressing this issue before I get to that point.