A neighbor has a huge barn where she holds monthly garage sales monthly during warm weather. Proceeds benefit a local animal shelter. We donate things to the sale rather than bothering with Craigslist, etc.
People buy anything as long as the price is right. Chipped dishes, old furniture, ashtrays, broken lawnmowers, stained doilies, you name it.
Except for TVs. We finally upgraded to a flat-screen, and automatically hauled the 450 pound old TV (fully functional) to the sale site where we found a “No TVs” policy. Seems she cannot give them away.
What else doesn’t anyone want, even if it is free?
Treadmills or exercise bikes
Get-Rich-Quick real estate courses on tape
stained tupperwear
religious books and music
Plastic plants
Tube TVs and monitors
Those cheap glass vases that come free with flowers
It’s difficult to give away a sofa. A lot of charities won’t take them because they require two people to pick up, and the charities only send one person in the truck.
It’s getting damn hard to give away anything but a top of the line piano. Keyboards have pretty much destroyed the market for anything less than a baby grand.
Hm. I’ve seen working TVs selling around here as recently as three years ago; we picked up a couple for our spare bedrooms for $10-$20 each. That seemed to be about the going rate.
The local charity driven thrift shops won’t even accept xp era computers anymore, because they don’t sell. If it doesn’t have vista,win 7 on it, they send you on your way. Same goes for CRT monitors, analog TVs, VCRs, and game systems older than a PS2.
Given the number of garage sales I go to the rest of your list is spot on. These first two actually depend on the quality. Higher end exercise equipment actually sells very quickly, especially treadmills. I see that stuff going at 8, 9 am and missing from sales I hit later (when I know at all, because it was listed in the ad). What doesn’t sell is the $150 walmart treadmills that are barely large enough to stand on, and can’t be run on, and the weird fad exercise equipment that you don’t find in a gym.
Edit to add, used underwear for very small children sells pretty well, actually, and I see people trying to sell bras all the time, although rarely see buyers.
We’ve noticed the same thing on Craigslist. We never advertise in the Free section-- too many “No Shows” and very little interest. Our strategy now is “$20 or free if you pick up this afternoon”. We have usually 20 hits in 10 minutes and can usually get rid of it within an hour. Much better way to get rid of things!
I work in IT. When we have too many old (4 to 5 years) computers sitting in the back, we let our employees know. We usually have 70 to 80 requests for 4 or 5 machines. Same goes for monitors, cases, etc.
We can’t GIVE AWAY the 2 and 3 year old printers. Big HP deskjets and Officejets, and fax/scan combos. Nobody want them - because the cost for the toners is the same cost as buying a new machine.
By which I mean “set it on the curb and a truck will show up three minutes later to grab it for scrap metal content.”
We benefit from a pretty lenient pick-up policy with our trash collection so I can afford to take chances but I’ve noticed many thing disappear if left on the curb. TVs, couches, love seats, small appliances, exercise equipment, etc. The only thing I ever saw stay until collection was a heavy-as-hell wooden “lawyer’s desk” that needed pretty significant reconditioning to be useful as furniture.
Here’s a list of shit that’s in my house that, so far, I haven’t been able to give away. Holler if anyone wants any of this crap:
•Old car stereo speakers
• AM/FM/Cassette receiver/head unit for a car
•100 watt pre amp for a car stereo system
• An ancient HP PC that runs Windows 95 IIRC.
• Old boom box unit that has a double cassette and CD player.
• Mismatched used socks (I keep 'em for dusting)
• An old radar detector from the early 90s.
Steel desks. There’s one where I work. It sits in a small room that used to be the office, and now is a storeroom. Awhile back a junk man/scrap dealer came and picked up a bunch of stuff, but he said that desk will be here until a tornado takes it.
How about ironing boards? You can still buy new ones, but they never wear out and the style doesn’t change. So anyone who wants one will already have one.
No shit! I am dumping that crap off with them the first chance I get. Thanks!
Ironic: I bought that PC from Best Buy. Worst purchase decision I’ve made in a good long while. And I think it was a Packard Bell, not an HP. Whatever, it was damn near worthless when I got it. :smack:
