No they are not ripping old people off. They are offering a fair price for stuff that would probably just lay around and rot anyway. I don't think grandma's and grandpa's in their 70's & 80's are going to be putting stuff in an auction that they've hung onto for 30 to 50 years anytime soon. To them it's memories, thinking it's worthless to anyone else. This way they get a little money in their pockets and someone else might love it as much as they did. Yeah they make some profit, but that's business. At the same time America's history is preserved. A time when this country actually manufactured things the world actually bought.