How Long Does It Take to Sell an Inherited Toy Collection?

Did you inherit a toy collection that you no longer want? There are multiple different ways to sell an inherited toy collection. However, it is important to look at the timeline with your different options of selling. Selling an entire inherited toy collection can take only a few days up to a whole year to sell. 

There are a lot of factors that play into how long it takes as well. Research, inventory, packaging, condition, and demand all affect the overall timeline for any option you choose to sell your collection. Throughout this blog today, we will mention the four options to sell your inherited toy collection. 

With this, we will mention the timeline and details that go with each one. Those four options include selling to a specialty toy buyer, selling as an estate, selling to an auction house, and selling the collection yourself. Follow along in our blog with us today to learn how long it takes to sell an inherited toy collection. 

Join Us in Our Blog Today!

Join us as we journey through this blog to see how long it takes to sell an inherited toy collection. See how each way to sell takes a different amount of time and the factors that will make a difference regardless. We trust this blog will be helpful to you in your selling process.

Factors that Change the Timeline

There are a few factors that can change the timeline regardless of the option you choose to sell through. You can help by preparing yourself to sell your inherited toy collection and know how to prevent these severe timeline changes.

Research and Inventory

If you just inherited the collection, you might need to do research for each item to get to know the names, manufacturer, date of release, condition, and value of each item. Taking inventory is also important if the previous owner didn’t take inventory themselves.

Even if you have an inventory from the previous owner, you may want to update the value of each item to current market demands. Another aspect of inventory is taking photos of the entire collection. This is beneficial and necessary with every possible way you can sell your collection. 

Taking inventory and doing research takes a lot of time and can add weeks or even a month to the overall timeline depending on how big and extensive the collection is. While you won’t necessarily need an inventory list when selling in bulk to a toy buyer, all of the other ways to sell an inherited toy collection will need an inventory and/or research done before selling. 

Packaging

Another factor that can change the timeline for how long it takes to sell an inherited toy collection is packaging. This would be after you already have a buyer. This step is the last thing that happens before shipping the items out to the buyer.

Yet, when you go through all of the time and effort it takes for pictures, inventory, listing, communicating, and many other details, the packaging at the end doesn’t seem like much but can add more time if you have a large and complex collection. 

While packing up a toy collection of tens of items can take only an hour or so, packing up a collection of large items, many small items, or hundreds of different items can take a lot longer. It could even unexpectedly take days if you need to get more boxes and packing material for the collection.

Condition and Demand

The last thing we will mention that changes the timeline for selling an inherited toy collection is the condition and demand of the items. These are two factors that are the most important when it comes to selling vintage toys. If your toy collection includes items that are high in demand and in good condition, your items will sell rather quickly. 

However, if you have items that are high in demand but not in good condition, these probably won’t sell quickly if at all, especially if there are multiple items in good condition on the market. These will sell out much quicker than the low condition items. Some good condition items that are not in high demand might sell fast if the demand for them rises unexpectedly or if there is even just one collector that really desires the item. 

Most of the time, though, you need both good condition and high demand for an item to sell fast. This is one main reason why selling an entire collection yourself takes the most time. It is rare to have an entire collection of mint condition toys that are in high demand and sell out fast. Most of the time, even if you have the majority of high condition and high demand items, it can take months for every single item to sell.

Timeline for Selling- Depending on Where You Sell

Next up, we will talk about the timeline for how long it takes to sell an inherited toy collection based on where you decide to sell it. There are many different places to sell a toy collection and have a good experience. We will mention four of these today with the different factors, how long they take, and what the experience will most likely look like. Continue following along in our blog to see the following factors. 

Bulk Selling the Entire Collection to a Toy Buyer

The first option is to sell your entire inherited toy collection to a specialty toy buyer. Specialty toy buyers make it their entire job to buy and sell toys. They know exactly how to do it well and they can fill you in on all of the details. 

Selling to a specialty toy buyer also allows you to not have to do as much work or heavy lifting throughout the selling process. All you have to do, as the one with the inherited collection, is find a trustworthy toy buyer and send them pictures and/or a list of your collection. 

The toy buyer then looks at your items, gives you back an expert valuation of their worth, and handles the rest of the selling process for you. After you agree on a value for the items, you will need to stay in contact and either ship your collection to the toy buyer or arrange a time for them to pick it up. 

There are many pros when it comes to selling an inherited toy collection to a toy buyer. The toy buyer handles all of the research, listing, selling, and shipping details for you so you don’t have to deal with any of that.

They know how to do it well and you won’t have to dedicate hours of your time to figure out how to do it well yourself. Another pro of selling to a toy buyer is that the entire process of selling can take as little as 1-3 days. It is the shortest timeline out of all of the ways to sell that we will mention. 

Another thing about toy buyers is that they typically purchase any kind of toy collection. Unless your entire collection isn’t worth anything at all, a toy buyer will most likely purchase your entire collection even if there are only a few items that are highly valuable.

Selling as an Estate

Next up, we will dive into how long it takes to sell your inherited toy collection as an estate. Selling a collection as an estate takes a little bit longer than selling it to a specialty toy buyer but still takes less time than some of the other options. When you use a professional liquidator, selling your toy collection as an estate can take as little as 1-2 weeks. 

When working with a professional at an estate sale, they take care of the organizing, pricing, and selling each item for you. Because of this, it does take time for the professional to do this work and then to have the actual sale.

There are also fees to consider with this process as well as understanding that your items might not sell for their full value or the price you wanted them to sell for. It is also not certain that each of the items in your collection will eventually sell. You won’t know what will sell until after the sale is over. 

Another thing to consider with selling the collection as an estate is that the estate company you work with will typically take up to 30-40% of commission. While this is a large amount, almost all of the other ways to sell a toy collection include a decrease in profit since other people are doing the work for you. In the end, it may actually be worth it and your toys may sell for high amounts of money.

Specialty Auction House

Another option of selling an inherited toy collection is to a specialty auction house. While a typical timeframe of selling through an auction house is around 1-3 months, if you sell to a specialty online auction house it can take a shorter amount of time- closer to one month. 

There are both pros and cons for selling to an auction house as well. It does often open up a wide advertisement to thousands of collectors at one time. This wide range of people, even globally, can help drive up prices through intense bidding. 

Another thing that is super helpful in this process, is that you are working with specialists or the auction house employees that will handle the pricing for you along with the cataloging, photography, marketing, and processing. 

It is super nice to have someone handle all of the work for you, however, with an auction house, there are also some cons. Auction houses do take a commission from the final sale price, as do some other selling options. Auction houses typically take around 10-25% of commission but may also charge extra for insurance, photography, managing, and other fees. 

Another con to consider is that your entire collection of toys sells individually as items and whatever doesn’t sell, you don’t get money for. You won’t know until the end of the sale which items people will purchase and which items will be left unsold. 

You may also not receive your payment for a bit of time after the sale ends. With auction houses, sometimes it takes weeks or even months for the payment to finally reach you. However, this can be a good option, especially for specific collections. High valued collections typically do the best at auctions as many people searching for items are assuming the prices will rise with demand.

Selling the Collection Yourself

Last up, we need to look at how long it would take you to sell the collection yourself. This one takes the most amount of time and effort from 3-12 months on average. However, it can take as little as a few weeks up to over a year depending on how you choose to sell your items, how many items you have, their value, condition, and demand from buyers. 

If you sell a toy collection by selling it as one big lot, it probably won't sell for a long time unless you happen to get an eager buyer right away. Another option is to sell the toy collection in individual larger lots. For many sellers, this can make a toy collection sell the fastest if you are selling the entire collection yourself. 

The last option is to sell the entire collection individually, item by item. This option definitely takes the longest time to sell everything. However, many people choose to sell this way as it allows them to get the highest prices for each item as well as a higher chance of each piece selling. 

When it comes to selling the entire inherited collection yourself, another thing to think about is all of the preparation work and all of the post-sale shipping and handling. It takes a lot of time to sell a toy collection yourself but you do get the benefit of being a part of the entire process and knowing exactly who your items are going to. 

The Factor of Capital Gains Tax

If you inherited a collection, you will need to get an assessment of the fair market value of the collection of the time you inherited it. The fair market value determines the amount a willing buyer would pay a willing seller.

This is an assessment of what the items are worth on the date you inherited the items. This is now your cost basis rather than the amount the original owner paid for the items. From this, you can get capital gains tax for collectibles off of whatever profit is made after selling. 

For instance, if your fair market value of an item is $400 and you sell the item right away for $400 exactly then you won’t get taxed on that item since there was no technical profit made based off of the fair market value. Since most vintage toys rise in value over time due to rarity, it is worthwhile to try and sell your toy collection in a timely manner after inheriting it.

Final Thoughts

There are many ways you can sell an inherited toy collection and each of those ways has a completely different timeline. The shortest timeline and best turnout, selling to a toy buyer, is the best recommendation. It gives you an expert to answer questions and handle much of the work for you.

It also gives you money back for your items the quickest as well as getting the toy collection off of your hands in just a couple of days. While this is our recommendation, other options might work best for some people. It is a good idea to explore your options and see what your best way of selling will be.

Do You Have Old or Used Toys?

Don’t let your collection sit in storage gathering dust—turn it into cash! At Wheeljack’s Lab, we specialize in evaluating and buying vintage and used toys, from single standouts to entire collections.

Our friendly, expert team has decades of hands-on experience in collectible toys, so you can expect honest evaluations and a smooth process from start to finish. Ready to sell? Call us at 888-946-2895 and let’s get started.

About the Owner, Chris Ingledue

Chris is the founder and owner of Wheeljack’s Lab Pop Culture and Toy Shop. His vision has always been to reconnect collectors with the toys and pop culture that shaped their childhoods—sparking memories, nostalgia, and imagination along the way.

Each day in the “Lab” feels like Christmas year-round. From scouring the internet for the next great treasure—much like flipping through the Sears Catalog of years past—to eagerly awaiting the postman’s arrival like Santa himself, Chris lives and breathes the thrill of the hunt. Helping collectors around the world experience their own version of Christmas is what makes being a vintage toy buyer an absolute joy.