Our Story

In 2023, my younger brother passed suddenly at the age of 40.  Without a will, his estate went into probate and the responsibility of untangling his home and all it’s contents falling primarily on me and my mom.

He left behind a 3-story house in St. Louis filled not only with the usual furniture and comforts of home, but several unique collections marking his varied passions going back to his teenage years. There were intricate Lego sets, collectable LPs, vintage turntables and receivers, Japanese comics, video drones, WWII-era posters, fancy bicycles, custom furniture and more—each with their own special market that would take time to understand.

The grief took it’s time to process and the weight of the task was overwhelming and murky. It’s a difficult process: there’s both an emotional and financial obligation to understand what everything is and where it can be placed. 

But drawing on my own interest and ability to research, and my experience selling my own things from time to time, I dug in. I shipped several boxes of smaller items back to my photo studio space in Brooklyn where I had a little room to organize and catalog them.

I found the process both engaging and healing. Through an understanding of his possessions and why he cared about them, I was in turn learning about him and finding some peace of mind getting them to the right places. The process allowed me to understand why other people cared about the same things. This brought a great financial benefit as well, in that by finding the most enthusiastic buyers you found people willing to pay fair prices. 

Things moved very quickly when we put his house on the market. We had an offer from the first couple to see the house, which put us on a tight deadline to deliver and empty house by closing. 

Despite my success dealing with many items that I had shipped back to New York, there was a lot left to deal with including good-quality furniture, a half-dozen bicycles and scores of related tools, boxes of video games and Blu-rays, giant tubs of Halloween decorations (my brother’s favorite holiday) and spare parts from his Volkswagen that he had been modifying.

We met with a respected local estate sale for a walk-through. After poking around for barely 15 minutes, he made an offer for $0. Well, actually, $1,500 for everything, minus the $1,500 cost for a clean out. I knew my brother and what all these things meant to him and I didn’t want to see it all swept away on the cheap, so I continued with the process of handling it myself. 

By investing time in the research, I discovered that many items had a lot more value than I’d initially thought and we ultimately realized $8,000 in sales, selling nearly everything. After we took a minivan load of usable items to a local charity we didn’t even need a clean out, the house was empty.

A surprising benefit of this process was connecting with many people who shared my brother’s passions. Not every transaction was warm and fuzzy, but the majority were interesting encounters with enthusiastic, appreciative people and I felt some comfort and peace knowing the things he cared about would continue on. 

I’m excited to use these skills, abilities and instincts to help people navigate the physical, financial and emotional aspects of letting go of the things they and their loved-ones valued.

I named the company ‘Dunie Brothers’ for my brother’s middle name, Dunie (pronounced duh-knee) which comes from my great-grandfather Harry Dunie and his older brother Nathan, who were the first on my mother’s side to emigrate to America from Russia in the 1900’s. After operating a street cart selling Kosher food, they opened Dunie’s Restaurant and Delicatessen in 1912 downtown at 13th Street and Delmar, which was run by the family until it closed in 1990. The deli was across the street from the former Globe Democrat and Post-Dispatch and hosted many reporters and editors from those newspapers.