Surplus store attracts avid bargain hunters and collectors
By Mike Lammi
Livingston Daily Press & Argus
GENOA TOWNSHIP, Mich. (AP) - Years of estate sales, auctions, and collecting antiques and vintage treasures have left the owners of Jake's Estate Sales with one problem.
"Our storage areas were bursting," said Janet Berk-Johnson, who runs Jake's with her husband, Kent Johnson, and friend Randee Adler.
"So we decided to try something new and open a temporary store," she told the Livingston Daily Press & Argus.
The Jake's Estate Sales Surplus Store opened Jan. 15 in Genoa Township near Brighton. About 1,000 square feet of space is packed with collectibles, artwork, dinnerware, furniture, jewelry, toys, tools and much more.
"What you see here is just a drop in the bucket," Berk-Johnson said. "We'll be bringing more stuff in daily. Most of it is in many various storage units and our basements, our homes, everywhere you can think of."
While some of the items for sale are from their personal collections, much of the store's inventory is the product of Berk-Johnson and Adler's work at Jake's Estate Sales. They conduct many estate sales each year, cleaning, organizing and selling the contents of homes, offices or storage units.
Like those estate sales, the surplus store has been attracting bargain hunters and collectors.
"You can get great buys at estate sales for a quarter of the price. People who are astute shoppers know they can get things cheaper," Berk-Johnson said. "Then there are also the collectors who are looking for specific items to add to their collections."
Because eBay does not allow the sale of BB guns, collectors might want to visit Jake's, where a number of old Daisy BB guns can be found.
Some of the other items displayed at the store last week included old Chicago police uniforms, a Gene Autry guitar, vinyl records, box cameras and vintage McCoy yellow smiley face mugs.
"Different people collect different things. You never know (what things will sell)," Adler said. "And people like things they are familiar with. Maybe they remember their parents' home or their grandparents' home, 'Oh, my grandmother had that cookie jar!'"
Adler said organizing estate sales is a labor of love because they never know what they are going to discover.
"It's fun for us, and we like the learning," she said. "We've learned about different styles of furniture and period pieces and why things were made out of different materials."
Visitors to their store are bound to find something new on each visit.
"We have so much, we don't even know what we're bringing in - it's just the next box," Berk-Johnson said with a laugh. "There will be new stuff here every day. We could fill this place three, four or five times."
The Jake's Estate Sales Surplus Store is open seven days a week from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Berk-Johnson said the store will remain open through the first week of April, when the estate sale season gets busy.
If the store proves to be a success, she said they might do it again next year.
"This is just kind of an experiment, but if we do well, sure," Berk-Johnson said.
Published: Thu, Feb 05, 2015
