It’s just after sunrise in suburban Los Angeles, and a crowd of around 30 people has already begun sizing each other up along the palm-lined sidewalk. Polite smiles barely mask the simmering adrenaline, as we stand like sprinters poised at the starting line, waiting for the flag to fall. While the rest of the city luxuriates in a Saturday-morning slumber, we’ve instead gathered outside a house with a “For Sale” sign at the front for one irresistible reason: EstateSales.net has announced that a Hollywood prop stylist and a sound engineer are selling a lifetime of possessions, all in a single day.
Cutting a dash through the gaggle of bargain hunters, professional pickers, and the just-plain-curious, Carlotta Champagne and Haley Warr make a beeline for the sign-in sheet and slap our names down. Champagne wears a glinting gold fanny pack (bags, after all, can be confiscated), and both have their phones tethered to wrist straps, so hands remain free to rummage. Before arriving, Warr also used Google Lens to search through the listing photos, and is confident that the Birth of Venus painting—recreated this time with furry cats—is worth $20 at most, even though the seller will optimistically tap her for $50. Let it be known: these thrifty women are not here to mess around.
I’ve joined Champagne and Warr, queens of the estate sale scene, to delve into this once-underground world. These days, thanks to a desire to shop more sustainably, a pushback on the monoculture, and tightening purse strings due to the rising cost of living, estate sales are edging their way into the mainstream. Social media accounts such as Macy Eleni, Handled, and VintageonQ have helped spread the word, often previewing sales before they open to the public.
Most of these everything-must-go events follow one of the three Ds: death, divorce, or downsizing. They’re typically orchestrated by professional companies within the homeowner’s domestic space. But occasionally it’s a family member, or even the homeowner themselves, running the show: a delicate situation that comes with its own etiquette. “It’s important to be sensitive and to show a genuine appreciation for the person’s things,” Champagne says, noting she’s seen dealers misread the room, their enthusiasm for a score verging on callous.
Our names are called, and we file into the modest San Fernando Valley house. Neon green price stickers dot every item in sight: box-fresh anime figurines, lovingly handmade gothic Lolita dresses, even half-used talc powder and pots of blue hair dye fidgeting for space on the bathroom counter. It feels like playing detective, piecing together whose life these objects once belonged to. The mind can’t help but wonder what others would make of the fragments of my own life laid bare in this way, which feels somehow exposing and anonymous all at once.
While estate sales can be found right across the country, Los Angeles is a particular hotspot. On any given weekend, as many as 100 sales crop up in the city, Champagne explains, adding that she and Warr currently live in Las Vegas but drive to Los Angeles often for the rich pickings.
The duo has been known to hit 15 sales in a day, reselling their finds on the live-auction site Whatnot. “I don’t dilly dally. I’m in and out quickly,” Champagne says with steely determination. She uses EstateSales.net, EstateSales.org, Facebook Marketplace, and Craigslist to track down events, adding that while many sellers take card or Venmo, cash is king when it comes to haggling.
“People who work in Los Angeles’s entertainment industry are often so consumed by their work that they never had families or children,” she notes. “When they pass, their belongings are often seized by the state and liquidated.” It’s turned the city into a treasure trove for collectsors.
This is also a place where appearances can be deceptive, so don’t write off a listing just because the house seems unremarkable in online photos. With so many properties belonging to industry insiders, it’s not uncommon to slide open a closet and discover a bedazzlement of twinkling Bob Mackie costumes, left behind by a colleague of the legendary designer.
Staggering under the weight of our haul, we head to the next estate sale, held in a producer’s home. Printed TV and movie scripts, including the Mad Men pilot signed by its creator Matthew Weiner, are laid out on the front porch of the rinky wooden house.
“I’ve been to estate sales outside Los Angeles, but there’s really no comparison,” Warr says as we leaf through a dusty pile of Technicolor lifestyle magazines from the ’60s. “There’s just more history here, so you find all these time-capsule homes.”
Each neighborhood in La La Land has its own unique charms. “Echo Park and Silver Lake have a lot of older musicians, so it’s good for picking up instruments,” Warr says. Beverly Hills? That’s the place to scoop antiques from the ’30s and earlier. Orange County is awash with Disney memorabilia, while the San Fernando Valley is where the movie studio workers reside. Celebrity sales often occur in Bel Air or Malibu, where, in 2025, fans of the late singer Tom Petty were allowed to roam his Mediterranean-style estate, nabbing everything from bath towels to a casserole dish once used by the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer.
We push on, and after a fleeting visit to a mid-century bungalow (far too crowded and erratically priced, it’s swiftly decided), we swing by our fourth estate sale. It’s clearly a hot-ticket event, with a snaking queue out front and a security guard stationed by the entrance. This is nothing, Warr tells me as we add our names to the list, which already runs to 320 people.
“We went to the estate sale of Allee Willis,” she says, referring to the late songwriter who co-wrote the Friends theme tune and lived in an Art Deco pink party pad in North Hollywood. “It was like a celebrity event. They did a presale with drinks and a DJ. It was really well curated, and she had an insane shoe collectsion, velvet paintings, and cool novelty things like a camera shaped like a lipstick.” Warr, who once slept in her car to be first in line to snap up a vintage conversation-pit sofa, recalls it as one of the wildest sales she’s ever attended.
Yet it’s not all clinking cocktail glasses and Louis Vuitton bags purchased for the price of a round of coffees. “One of the worst situations was an extreme hoarder’s house, where they handed out masks on entry because there were rats. It was disgusting,” says Champagne, who has been cut by glass and pricked by dressmaker pins at various sales.
“I don’t even really mind the nastiness of a hoarder sale,” Warr confesses with a wry smile. “But there was a sale in Beverly Hills where these older men physically pushed us out of the way to get to some cameras.”
When we finally make it inside the sprawling ranch house, carpeted with plush shagpile, the wait proves worthwhile. A bed is strewn with hats, including a chic Jackie O pillbox. The record collectsion features rare Jimi Hendrix vinyl, and the walk-in closet conceals a fur coat and chain-link purse. A hipster passes by with a framed cowboy painting tucked under his arm, while a mother and daughter tag-team their way through a drawer of lacy underwear.
There’s an undeniable sense of intimacy to the whole experience. It’s something that Champagne is well attuned to, she tells me as we sift through the garage, finding enough festive lights to decorate the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree. “Many estate sales make me feel connected to the owner, even if I’ve never met them,” she says. “I once visited a house filled with avant-garde art, Pee-wee Herman dolls, and just the craziest clothing. I felt like we could have been friends. It was sad she hadn’t been in my life.”
Armed with a couple of oversized chintz lampshades, we call it a day. Back at the hotel, Champagne tallies her delightfully random haul: 27 items for $125 in total, including a whimsical Oops California dress, a boned corset, a jester’s cape, an original 1940s lace-and-velvet dress, and four rolls of retro wallpaper.
Warr has walked away $100 lighter with 25 items to show for it. Highlights include an evening gown by Alyce Designs; a label that dressed beauty pageant winners in the ’70s, some slim-fit leather trousers, a disco-groovy beaded curtain, and a framed Regency-style portrait of a cat in full military regalia.
Beyond the sheer thrill of bargain hunting, Champagne believes a deeper transaction takes place at the estate sales. “I once saved a framed portrait from the house of a woman obsessed with roses. It now sits in my home beside a little vase of red plastic roses,” she says, surrounded by heaps of sequined tops and a touch-me velour jumpsuit. “I make a point of enjoying these pieces and giving them a new lease of life. Really, it’s about the memories that live on through the things we find at estate sales.”
