Aug 21

Do your kids want any of your stuff?

Most of my stuff would probably be called junk more than art but I get the point they are making. This came up in my yahoo feed and it made me stop and think. You guys have an opinion? My kids don't want my stuff and I need to start thinning. How does this impact antique cars?
https://finance.yahoo.com/real-estate/articles/1-trillion-boomer-art-collections-113000400.html

Aug 21, 2026

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Replies (13)

· Aug 21

Interesting. I hadn’t thought about art, but I suppose it applies to collections of just about anything. Definitely a huge market adjustment happening. The high quality items, regardless of what they are, aren’t likely to be thrown out. But they might be sold cheap.

· Aug 21

I'm on the other side of this equation. My dad has some cool stuff that I might want, but that is maybe 10% of the stuff.

· Aug 21

I don't have kids.
I'm leaving everything to my dogs.
Plus a short length of rope for my mother-in-law.

· Aug 21

That’s a frightening thought. I don’t have kids either but my dog is a complete moron. NOT a good caretaker.

· Aug 21

My dad and I had identical interests but slightly different tastes. He passed away 4 years ago leaving my mom 8 cars and a garage full of stuff, car trailer, etc. I've been gradually working my way through getting rid of the cars. Sold the trailer a couple of years ago. I'm down to 4. 2 of them I might like to keep but I need to buy them at market. And it is hard for me to express how much I hate my dad's color choices.

So the moral here is that collecting is such an individual activity that even when the starts are aligned like in my case, it still doesn't work because I don't have the same exact taste as my dad. I'm sure we can apply this to any art or collectible. Chances of your kids wanting your stuff is close to zero, regardless of what it is.

· Aug 21

My mom collected tea pots. There is a much bigger disconnect between us than the colors.

· Aug 21

My mom collects tea pots too! I've made one too many jokes about getting a dumpster.

· Aug 22

The dumpster joke comes up a lot with my mom too. Except she only collects random crap, which she calls “crapola” to decorate with. She’s a realist though, she’s signed off on the dumpster solution when the time comes.

· Aug 21

My parents do not really collect anything so this will not be a problem for me. And I don't own a collector car and my Pokémon card collection is long gone.

· Aug 21

My dad was not a car guy and certainly not an art collector. So this was not anything I had to think about. I'm young enough that I haven't started to worry about the other direction yet.

· Aug 22

While I don't think he will want most of it I think he will want some of it. No plans to thin things down yet - we have 3 cars that are all pretty modest but all on the road and popular enough to liquidate. A pretty good collection of gas and oil - as long as anyone has interest in those collectibles I would say our stuff tends to be better items so it should sell. I envision him keeping some of the stuff but not all of it.
My dad was a collector with 3 interests over the years. Railroad related, where he built up quite a collection and was well known by those guys but he liquidated that after interests changed. He also did a lot with gas and oil in the 70s - 90s most of which I have now. He later focused on western collectibles. I have those now and plan to liquidate most of it - researching now. I am keeping only a small portion of that.
My goal is to enjoy all this junk upon retirement now about 2 years out - but I am good with liquidating at some point if he doesn't want most of it as I would naturally have more time and knowledge to try to maximize the value.

· Aug 22

You either have the collectors mind or you don't. Model Railroading was a big deal 50 plus years ago. There were local clubs everywhere and lots of guys had the setup in their basement.

· Aug 23

Yeah one quick thought though on planning as relates to collectibles.  Most of us will likely look at life's calendar and plan on taking any action to move things along either pretty late or upon death.  Becoming incapacitated unfortunately should be a consideration.
Dad had dementia and despite being willed to me and we had talked about my being able to begin the process of taking his collectibles, I really wanted him to enjoy them as long as possible.  So I delayed that process.  Two concerns to consider (could be more, this is just my experience) some really valuable items grew legs (a risk I was aware of) but also he came close to damaging some of his stuff.
I caught a huge lucky break one Saturday afternoon.  I show up to see him and he has 3 Colt SAA revolvers (2 first gen, 1 second gen all mint & lettered for those with any interest in these sort of things) on a bench with a bottle of gun bluing  "I was waiting for you to clean these up a bit" Phew!!  Applying that to those guns would have been the equivalent of pouring sand down the carburetor on a fresh prewar engine build.  I figure a 12 - 15k mistake on top of ruining 3 fantastic untouched examples of early the SAA..  That was a wake up call about his condition that I knew was advancing but...  Anyway we moved that part of the collection to my place rather quickly after that.
I definately get it when I hear about cars coming out of estates where the owner had done some odd things to them in later years..