This past weekend, I added another "first" to my ever-increasing resume. Dana and I sifted, sorted, packaged, and priced - and stocked our front lawn with high quality items priced to sell.
Here are the highlights:
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People buy some of the dumbest stuff. Dana collected a bucket of pens and hawked it for a buck. We basically sold our junk drawer for a buck.
Having a yard sale makes you feel kind of naked. When people come buy and looked, I almost wanted to explain why I had certain stuff.
People will buy anything if a) it is in the "Everything is a quarter" section b) they can talk you down from whatever price is on it. Go ahead - stick a 25 cent sign on a pile of poo - I guarantee someone will buy it. It's only a quarter!
Yard sales bring out some interesting characters. I was seriously intimidated by some of the professional yard-customers that our sale brought out. They had it almost down to a science - pull up in car, hop out, quickly rifle through stuff, if something found - signal to driver / if nothing found - run and hop back into car and drive to next sale.
I was expecting some haggling, but only a couple people did and they did it with Dana, who is an expert haggler. Everyone should marry someone who is an expert haggler.
The haggler-come on: "What is the least you would take for this?" Made me feel kind of cheap.
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Overall, it was a good day. We made some scratch, met some interesting folk, and lightened our load for the B(i)G move.
Peace and grease. I'm out like a pro yard-saler at a crappy yard sale.
3 comments:
I loove the B(i)G reference, oh Master of the Syntax Crafting.
Glad you guys could make a bit of cashish to buy some furniture.
i'm out like Amy Grant tapes on the 25 cent section...
Glad it was a success. Our last yard sale was a funny experience, too. I kept taking it personally when people would "knock" our stuff and think it was overpriced. But then I remembered, "Oh yeah. That's why I'm selling it. It IS crap. Maybe it's not worth as much as I thought."
KL
Dude you haven't dealt with professionals until you have a Church-wide rummage sale. When we open the doors people run in like that old supermarket game show. At our spring rummage sale I had a guy remove a price tag for some very nice golf clubs that I had priced at $100 and he put a $5 price tag (from something else) on it and brought it forward. He asked me to hold the clubs for him while he shopped somemore. I said I would love to do that as long as he understood that the clubs were $100 and not $5! His face got red and he left.
Some people tried to barter with us and we said that we couldn't because all the proceeds were for missions. One guys said he didn't care what it was for.
Woowee!
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