Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Thinking more about this thread, I have to think back to my youth and growing up in Wyoming in the 70's and 80's. From other times looking back I've seen a lot of mention that Wyoming at that time was a lot like what Most people think of when they remember the 1950's elsewhere. A friendly community who'd be more than happy to help a neighbor.
Anyway, at one intersection that was fairly busy, every Saturday you'd see a wall of boxes with addresses. People would take a box down there with address and hours, usually when they were about to open (but sometimes the night before), and there was always a crowd of people who were there to write down addresses. A "slow" week would be less than a dozen boxes, busy would be 50 or more.
So, I was sent down on my bicycle (never any parking), grab all of the addresses in a notebook and then we would roam the town. My dad sold insurance so he already knew most of the small town (and would arrange the sales in the most efficient driving path possible), so it was just a long social event as they would chat with people at each stop. I don't remember Buying much, but it was how we spent a lot of Saturdays ~ years worth of Saturdays and my folks kept it up well into the 2000's when they eventually built their dream home in Montana and moved away.
Times have changed, but there was once a time when Garage Sales were very much a popular thing, not a risk and constant bombardment of morons. Might be something worth thinking about as you carry on roasting the topic...
We've held one years ago and attended many. My observation is that things around $1-$5 sell easily and most other things sit. Also kids used toys tend to sit. I feel sorry for so many young families that put out their kids old Little Tykes toys and never see them sell.
I've done many garage sales over the years, and the most recent was about 2 years ago. Since I am at the point where I don't need anything and I don't collect anything (that you would ever find at a garage sale), I don't go to garage sales any more.
My rule for garage sales is that I am putting out things I no longer want, I am not doing this to make money. Things are priced to move because I don't want to have to deal with them. If someone else wants to take the time to buy something, shine it up and resell it, great: I certainly don't want to do it.
Things are worth pretty much what someone else wants to pay for it, not what I think I should "get" - last garage sale, among the other things for sale, I probably sold 50 hardback cookbooks and I netted $100 or so from the books. Great, I don't have to lift the box again. Were some of those books worth more? Yes. Do I want to drive around trying to sell them to bookstores or dealing with the ebay hassle of bids, packaging things for shipment, dealing with the post office? No.
At the other house, with garage in front, I never left the garage or house doors open.
I don't sell via craigslist anymore, unless the item is relatively inexpensive and I can have it out front when the person comes by (the last item I sold was a small table). I don't invite people inside the house to see things.
Today a person in my neighborhood had a yard sale....again. I looked out several times during the day and had the front door open for a while and didn't see one car stop. We are on a dead end so we don't get traffic anyway. He has gotten people before but all he has is junk so I don't think people buy anything. I've spoken to him and he seems like a slow adult. He also has his niece, I think, drive him to a nearby intersection of town property on a main road and he tries to sell his junk there too. I called police to ask if that was allowed and they said I would have to call code enforcement. It's a Wednesday and it's been ugly and cloudy too.
I found an old typewriter once put out curbside and brought it home, it was one of those antique ones I would guess from the 1940s that was very heavy, I put it in the basement of the home I grew up in, I bet my father threw it out.
We used to have yard sales, but stopped when we realized it was too much work for too little monetary reward. These days, if I have junk, I put it out in front of the house with a "FREE STUFF" sign on it. Occasionally, I will put a "curb alert" about the free stuff on Freecycle and Craigslist. Free stuff always disappears. ALWAYS. Sometimes even stuff I put out for the trash disappears and it makes me scratch my head. Someone took a bunch of plastic planters with giant holes and cracks in them (thank you, former lawn mowing crew that used weed wackers on everything!). Who would want beat up, faded, cracked and holey plastic planters??
If something is worth enough to sell, I sell it on eBay or Amazon. I have nearly 20 years' experience selling on eBay, so I am pretty comfortable doing that. No more yard sales for us. And I stopped going to yard sales a few years ago. I don't need any more "stuff"!
You guys would be surprised - old typewriters are collectable. In our town, we recently had a typewriter repair guy open a store next to a store that sells old typewriters.
And while I don't agree with trying to lowball prices, I can't find any fault with someone who wants to buy stuff to resell it, even at a higher price. I've sold on eBay and it's a pain in the patootie. I hate the packing stuff and going to the PO and now with the shipping the way it is, you practically have to pack and weigh your things to find out how much to charge to send them. I also hate loading things up to bring them to a donation center. That's work.
So I figure I'm putting things out to get rid of them and if someone wants to do me the favor of paying me to take them, more power to them if they want to do the hard work of reselling stuff on eBay for a higher price.
A closed and locked house, garage, and gate, along with curtains drawn over the windows and a Doberman in the back yard seemed to deter the lookyloos.
And if anything was left over, it was left on the end of the driveway overnight with a price tag on it. There's always someone who will come along and steal something we didn't want to have to haul to Goodwill. Afterhours entertainment was watching someone trying to heft a large (non-working) fridge into a little truck. Saved on the garbage bill, too.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
