In real life, I’m not likely not know if a given item is very valuable or not. If I have a suspicion but no way to confirm, I may buy it at or near the asking price and then figure out if it’s real mink or rat hair. In that case I’m taking a gamble and have no compunction about keeping my suspicions to myself. If, OTOH, I knew for sure the item was valuable and seller has no idea of the real value, I would probably say something. If the seller wasn’t swayed I would buy it immediately, if he were I would negotiate a more reasonable (but still garage sale level) price - or walk away. Otherwise I would feel like I was taking advantage of someone, which would make me uncomfortable. YMMV.
Over half going with “Depends” or “Not if I want it…”, and I get flack for simply taking an intellectual interest in immorality. Maybe I’m just feeling overly judgmental today, but I feel like it’s always wrong to prey on someone else’s ignorance.
ETA: Referring to very seriously underpriced stuff, not just your typical garage sale “gimme $5 for this thing before I throw it away”.
I think in a free market you’ve got to look for every advantage you have without cheating. If this person owns the item, hasn’t bothered to learn about it, wants to sell it, and is happy with the price they put on it, why not just buy it for the asking price? That way everyone is happy.
I’d say something if I had specific knowledge that an item was substantially under valued. I wouldn’t feel right buying a 6,000 item for $30.
I’d consider buying a $200 item for $30. I like a good deal, within reason. 
The seller has some responsibility in valuing his stuff.
This has come up on pawn stars.
Cust. can I get $350 for my brother’s guitar?
Rick it’s actually worth more. I’ll give you $900
Cust. how about $1000?
LOL they always get greedy
If someone had a Faberge egg or a genuine Stradivarius in their garage sale, sure, I’d say something. But that has never come up and probably never will (not that I’d be able to spot those two examples anyway).
But something worth $100 priced at $5? Sure, I’m taking that deal. That’s why I’m at a damn garage sale in the first place. If people want top dollar for their stuff, they can do their homework and put it on eBay.
Not sold at a garage sale, but somebody found it in a shoebox in her attic and took it to have it appraised. Sold at auction for 16.2 million Euro.
This doesn’t directly apply, but …
I once bought a couple of books at a yard sale. It was one of those situations where you’ve been browsing for a bit, haven’t found anything appealing, and are starting to feel a bit sorry for the sellers. They had a bunch of used books for $.50 each, so I bought a couple that looked mildly interesting.
I took them home and found that one was signed by the author (who had died in a rather strange way several years after the book had been published). I also found that someone had been using a $1 bill as a bookmark, so I’d got the two books for free. (If it had be a $20 bill I’d have felt some duty to return it.)
I recently came across the book and realized I’d never feel any need to read it again - so I decided to offer it on eBay. I thought the signature would might possibly make someone willing to pay enough that I could afford the cost ($4) of shipping it to them. It sold for $48.
We used to make some spare money by buying at garage sales and then selling items on eBay. Just like many antique dealers shop garage sales for underpriced “finds”.
We currently live in Los Angeles, so there is little chance of finding a bargain in this market. Everyone knows how much everything is worth, so there is more of a tendency to overprice than to underprice in garage sales.
Instead, we would go back to where we grew up in small town midwest and shop there. It’s a different crowd selling there, in terms of price knowledge. Every once in a while, hidden in the pile of worn out kids toys and tools, there would be some ceramic item they inherited from grandma, or some oddball thing grandpa had brought back from Europe when he was in WWII. One item of Delft ceramic we found was sold on to a collector who featured it in a book on Delft ware.
But, nowadays everyone can easily look up interesting items online so there really is no excuse for deeply underpricing.
We got out of this business years ago.
As for telling the seller, it was never anyone we knew, so we wouldn’t go to the effort.
That is the same around here (Kansas City) most people already know what there stuff is worth.
But, we still get those people who rush in and are sure they will find some valuable find and expect me to be some “dupe” who sells something for $1 they can sell for $500 and they often get mad at me because I dont.
Quick story:
A few years ago I was selling some old VHS tapes. Who would know, some are valuable???
Well anyways I had this batch selling for 50 cents each. This guy came in and began scanning the bar codes with his phone. Some app he had then returned their value and lo and behold, some old vhs tapes of classic cartoons were selling for like $5 to $20!
It depends on a lot of variables. Usually if I do its more a spur-of-the-moment thing based on circumstance than a deliberate plan. I have sometimes paid more – “tipped” in a sense – for something I wanted that was priced way too low. More often at something like a church sale than a private garage sale but I have done nit there as well. I came across a set of 30 1-ounce silver medals (sterling) at a yard sale back when silver was around $2.50 the ounce priced for $10. At checking out I told the lady there were “pretty and cheap at twice the price – so here’s 20 bucks”. She was happy as Hades and I still made out like a bandit.
Is that universally true? For example, I play Magic the Gathering. It is pretty common for people to take advantage of young and/or New players into making bad trades or selling cards for much less than their value. I think saying those players didn’t do anything dishonest is crazy.
I think getting a good deal on something is one thing (or buying something and then only later leaning it was valuable) and is fine but I don’t think it is as cut and dried as you say. There is a line somewhere where to do the right thing you should at least offer more or you were being dishonest.
I am packing for a move and just learned this as well. Also some cassette tapes. I wish I left some of my Disney VHS tapes in their plastic because some of those go for hundreds of dollars unopened.
If I saw what I thought was someone who didn’t recognize that an item might be valuable then I’d tell them, for example a grieving relative selling off a hobby item that is actually an expensive collectible for ‘just get rid of it’ price. But this would be something like “do you realize some of the individual cards in this Magic: The Gathering collection go for over $500 apiece and you’re selling the lot for $20”, where I felt like the person didn’t realize it was something that had a value they could look up. But if they’re selling a collection that I think might be worth $500 total if you sorted it and sold individual cards for the same $20, that’s a pretty normal “I want to get rid of this quickly” markup. (I also don’t really know anything about Mtg card values, I’m just making it up as an example).
For the most part people actually overprice items, so I don’t think this is really likely in practice.
Manipulating someone into making a bad deal is not the same thing at all.
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Depends on the magnitude.
Someone selling something worth $100 for $5? Probably not. Someone selling something worth $1000 for $5? Probably.
I recently helped pack and store a thousand little trinkets and art objects for my MIL, each too valuable in their own way to depart with. Some might even be valuable. When we have that yard sale - please take the items at the posted the price and chuckle over your bootie in your car. Someone will love that silly trinket like she did, a lot more than I or anyone else in the family does apparently, and that’s fine. I congratulate you on your enterprise because I sure as hell don’t know how to move art quickly at top prices.
But it’s a lot of work to sell stuff on eBay. I do it frequently, but each item I sell represents the time I need to spend photographing the item, listing it on eBay, packing it for shipment, taking it to the UPS store, etc. Personally, anything I can’t sell for >$40 on eBay I donate to the local charity’s thrift store.
The problem with this is the value you put on your own time. Let’s say that I’m selling 3 dozen old VHS tapes and a dozen of them are rare ones worth 10 apiece on average. If I sell the lot at .50 each during my garage sale, it takes me essentially no time and I get $18 for the lot. If I sell the individual tapes at their value, I could instead get $120, which sounds much better. But I would have to research what each one is going for, find out how to set up a seller account on ebay and sort out how to handle money, set up a shipping account of some sort, then put in effort to take pics of and list each one, follow the auctions, ship them when someone else wants, take the risk of someone ripping me off, and take the risk of them not selling (they may be worth $10, but will they actually sell for $10 plus shipping?). All of a sudden this starts looking like a major project for a projected return that rapidly will go below minimum wage when I consider the time and effort. EDIT: Also forgot that ebay takes a cut of that too, so take even more off the potential benefit.
I personally would rather just get $18 and be rid of the tapes and let someone who already does ebay sales go through the trouble to make the extra $102, if they even can, than go through that much hassle for a small profit. And because of that, I wouldn’t even remotely consider ‘warning’ you that you’re selling the items for too little, because it’s actually not an unreasonable amount.