We had an estate sale when my mother passed and I literally went thru the house before the estate people and took out the things family members wanted. They were all welcome to go thru the house to take what they wanted, but felt ghoulish about it, so just told me what they wanted. I saved certain items, I told a several old book stores that my parents frequented they had passed and to come by the house - but never did until the estate people contacted them. There were over 5,000 books - they did not believe me - when they got there they all said how they were surprised by the amount of books, there was enough to open an actual bookstore, but we didn't have time.
When someone dies you have a couple months to liquidate the assets, so you sell what you can at very low prices. Do they buyers get bargains? Yes, do you really have a choice? I don't think so. And I don't want to talk about the art work they spent thousands of dollars and we go little or nothing for it. Time are tough and now people have very little money for extras. So they are not going to spend a lot of money at an estate or yard sale. If you charge too much people just walk away, and so something is better than nothing. If you don't have a dead line - that would be nice. But very few people have a lot of time, so thank you all for shopping the estate sales and please do not feel bad for buying the bargains.