There’s a funerary quality to estate sales. Over the course of a couple of days, total strangers wander through someone’s home, sifting through decades of accumulation. Items both treasured and forgotten are tagged with prices and sold off to anyone interested. Along with a sense that you may have picked up a bargain comes a simultaneous feeling of regret. Your gain, someone’s loss.

And while Judy Baar Topinka is still very much with us, her “estate” sale last Friday and Saturday at her political office at 7808 26th St. in North Riverside felt very much like good-bye.

“I liked her; she’s a wonderful lady,” said Lorraine Seymour, a LaGrange Park resident who said she’s know Topinka for decades. “She was my neighbor in Lyons when she lived there. I came here to see her a couple of times.”

Seymour and Bernadette Havranek, who was with her, each walked out with a small bust of Abraham Lincoln. Seymour’s bronze statue, about 4 inches tall, cost $5,50.

“We wanted something presidential,” Havranek said.

Others wanted desks, chairs, bumper stickers, political ephemera of all sorts, posters, filing cabinets and one of a plethora of old, obsolete telephones. Four full rooms, plus the basement, of the political office were crammed with mementos from Topinka’s political life. Table after table held plaques, Lucite statues and thank-yous from a bewildering variety of organizations-from the United Hellenic Voters of America to the Western Bohemian Fraternal Organization to the Retired Teachers Association.

Two bottles of “SKI” soda, $3.50 apiece. A framed, reproduction World War II recruiting poster for the Women’s Army Corps, $22. A picture of Topinka with North Riverside Mayor Richard Scheck, $5. There were even large, lovingly framed photos of a couple of Topinka’s dogs-Greta, who died over a decade ago, and Molly, her beloved Scottie.

A box of VHS tapes included “The Karate Kid” and its sequel. It also included “Maverick” and “John Madden on Football.” In an upstairs office, political junkies could grab a copy of Dan Quayle’s book, “Standing Firm,” or “The Agenda,” Bob Woodward’s book about the Clinton White House.

On a table in the basement-romance novels.

Among those browsing was a longtime friend of Topinka’s, Bob Klein.

“I just wanted to take a look,” Klein said. “It hurts. She’s a good person, and she served for the people. I don’t know any other politicians doing that nationally. If I can use one word to describe Judy, it’s ‘genuine.'”

Throughout Saturday morning a steady stream of those who knew Topinka and those who didn’t, but were curious nonetheless, filed through the narrow hallways of the office, while Cheryl Kolby of Riverside’s Kitchen Estate Sales and Maureen Becker, guided visitors and manned the cash box.

Kolby said that the sale had been a good one-one that certainly got more press than just about any estate sale. A news van was parked outside the political office for hours on Friday, and the sale made the pages of the Chicago Tribune and was featured on the WGN-TV news.

Topinka, who writes a bi-weekly column for the Landmark, wasn’t on hand either day of the sale, and she wasn’t talking to the press about the end of a 26-year political career that began in the state house and ended with a three-term stint as Illinois treasurer. Last November she lost in her only bid to become Illinois’ first female governor.

Reached by e-mail last Friday, she declined to answer questions about the sale and her immediate plans, other than to say she’ll be conducting a similar sale in Springfield as she closes down that political office.

“I just wish to go away quietly,” she wrote.