Boise estate sale heavy on antiques

BOISE – Another era is up for sale – but expect to pay modern-day prices.

An estate sale that includes decades worth of squirreled-away contents of a hardware store started in 1907 – ranging from spokes for covered wagon wheels to railroad lanterns – is planned this weekend in Boise.

“I’ve probably done 120 estate sales, and I’ve never seen one like this,” Mary Haggarty, a Boise antique dealer who is handling the sale, told the Idaho Statesman. “You just don’t see things like this. I was floored by this sale.”

The contents of Rosevear Hardware Co., which began as a lumber store in 1907 in the southern Idaho town of Glenns Ferry and closed in 1984, are being combined with the contents of a 10,000-square-foot house that was recently sold in Boise.

Joseph Rosevear ran a ranch and ferry that crossed the Snake River at Glenns Ferry. He became a state legislator, and his granddaughter, Ruby Rosevear, married J.R. Simplot when he was still just a farm boy and before he became a billionaire Idaho potato magnate.

For 77 years, three generations of family members ran the store.

“When the store closed in 1984 because of my father’s failing health, my mother couldn’t bear to part with anything,” said Linda McDonald, Joseph Rosevear’s great-granddaughter. “The things just sat in their house and other places until we decided to do the sale.”

Some items in the sale are still in their original boxes. The original price tag on a Coleman gas-fired iron was $6.35. It’s marked at $105 for the estate sale.

“Pricing things correctly was hard,” Haggarty said. “You go online, you use books, and I have friends who helped. But it was still hard. I’ve never sold (wagon) wheel spokes before.”

Also in the sale is an 1897 bicycle stand, a grill protector for a Ford Model T, a bamboo fishing rod, sunglasses from 1943, and assorted advertising props for various products.

“A lot of people have canceled hunting trips to go to this sale,” Haggarty said.

Linda McDonald’s husband, Dennis, attributed the vast cache of goods to a “genetic thing in some families.”

“They never throw anything away,” he said. “We found boxes and boxes of old letters, old store records, you name it. We even found the original homestead application for Joseph Rosevear’s ranch.”

The sale is set for 9600 W. Brookside Lane in Boise.