I hope everyone found great bargains at the local city wide garage-yard sales. I knew of two in this area; Jewell and Superior. It seems about every town has their city wide sales at one time or another. With the climbing inflation, taking advantage of shopping at these sales is a plus, and for the seller, it’s good to find a buyer for the items no longer needed at their house or shop.
For the true garage-yard sale shopper, the day calls for getting up early in the morning and getting on the hunting trail to find the sought after items before anyone else finds them. For the seller it means checking out all the home storage areas, closets and drawers, gathering items and trying to decide if you really want to get rid of them. Then comes the time to put up display tables and get everything stationed in the right spot where the items can be seen, looking their best. Next comes the task of getting everything priced. This is a hard decision as you don’t want to price too low, but at the same time you don’t want it so costly it doesn’t sell. After all, your hubby doesn’t want it all drug back into the house after the sale. He will be the first to remind you that the object of the sale is to get rid of things; not to have to find places to store them again.
A couple of days before the sale, the shoppers search the ads in the local newspapers to see the list of items for sale and where the sale is located. Pencil marks are made around each item that may be on the “want” nor “need” list. Garage-yard sale groupies look at these sales as a social time spent together enjoying what they like doing...finding a good bargain. These groupies go in the same vehicle and travel throughout the town, looking at the items and discussing them.
The problem comes when a large item or numerous items are found that don’t seem to fit into the vehicle driven to the sale. Decisions have to be made. In such a case...is it really what I want?...should I bother calling my husband to drive the pickup into town and ask him to help load it?...Maybe I can jam it all into the trunk and back seat, and not have to call for help.
If one can hold out purchasing a sought after item and risk having someone else come along and purchasing it, a person can hold out towards the end of the sale and return to see how much the price has been marked down. Is it worth missing out? That is part of the garage sale dilemma.
Though I’m really not a garage sale junkie, I have attended some through the years, either with my sisters who enjoy attending those sales, or with a friend who asked me to go along for the ride. One of my favorite purchases while with my youngest sister was finding two end tables and a coffee table that matched and fit in the Post Queen Anne house that had just been restored. I was elated to find those!
Now as a seller, my sister-in-law and I for a couple of years, would hold one during the Superior City Wide Sale. It was when our sons were young and we had a lot of clothes they had out grown. We were assured someone else would need them for their sons. We had it at her home in Superior and worked a day at our homes getting things ready to sell. Taking the items into her yard to display took another day and into the evening. We covered them all with plastic in case it would shower overnight. The following day, meant early to rise, and a drive to town to beat the early bird shoppers. It ended up being good a sale and profits were made.
I hope all the garage-yard sale junkies that went Saturday found and purchased what they were looking for. I hope all the sellers were able to make the sales that showed a profit for all the work that was put into it. But, most of all I hope that the sellers didn’t have to take things back home and store the items away to await the next sale day.
Reader Comments(0)