So the neighborhood garage sale is today. We put some stuff out. Some furniture, some toddler’s age fisher price stuff.
Nada. Not a single taker. We had, maybe, 5 cars drive by.
I’m wondering what would cause such an awful turn out as previous years were pretty good.
Could it be the economy? All the folks that frequent garage sales use Craigslist? Gas is too expensive for folks to drive around?
No real skin off my nose as I’ll just be taking the stuff to goodwill this afternoon. A (very) little bit of folding money would have been nice, but wow.
I suspect the gas prices are keeping the flow of customers way down this year. People used to spend the day searching sales. Many drove big old gas hog vehicles.
I ride a bike around the subs looking for deals. If I find something big enough I can ride home and get the truck. Garage sales are a crap shoot anyway for mechanical/electrical items. Sellers often hide defects. I thrive on defects. I love to repair things, but even I get tripped up and have to throw things out sometimes.
Gas prices and the economy are causing dislocations of various sorts this year. The number of sales seems to be about average around here probably because people need the money.
PS. My garage sale gripe is people trying to sell things at retail prices. Price it cheap and get it out the door.
Well I have an economic theory that garages sales don’t do as much as people think. They’re just a hiccup that keeps stuff out of the land-fill or Salvation army, but the money earned isn’t usually all that much.
You spend all that time lugging stuff up out of the basement, can’t see lugging it back down, and just take it to Good Will.
At the younger end of the spectrum, you have the same crappy happymeal toys going from the neighbor’s kids, to your kids, to your OTHER neighbor’s kids, all with $0.27 changing hands.
I was talking to my wife about this today. I wonder. If you took all your garage sale stuff, donated it to Goodwill, got a receipt and wrote off a reasonable amount as a charitable donation, wouldn’t you come out ahead? Especially given you have to spend your weekend as “shopkeeper”. I don’t know of a lot of people who even make enough on garage sales to get a decent dinner.
I’ve done just two garage sales, made $300 with the first and almost $200 with the second. The only reason I did so well was because it was garage sale weekend here in town – shoppers didn’t have to drive far to hit lots of sales.
How many signs did the OP put out, and where? I don’t go saling much, but if I see a neat, easily read sign, I’ll usually at least drive by the place. If the sale looks disorganized, or if it seems to be mostly clothes, I don’t even get out. If I can tell at a glance that there are some knickknacks and books and possibly furniture, then I stop.
If I can’t easily look through the items, I’m not going to stop and hunt. I WILL stop if there’s a good selection of books. The books should be sorted by genre, by the way…I don’t mind if they’re not in alphabetical order, but you really DO need to separate the westerns from the romances. Not that I’m interested in either, you understand, but I want to be able to skip those sections.
Next time, make sure that the signs are easy to read by a passing car. Balloons and streamers do work. And make sure to remove the signs after the sale.
It was the annual Subdivision garage sale. A local realtor advertises it in all the local rags, so it’s something folks know about. We had a bunch of Toddler toys, and some furniture. Perhaps we didn’t get the right demographic, but dang, nobody sold nuthin this weekend.
The garage sale for the neighboring subdivision seemed to be flourishing this morning (in other words–there was an obnoxious amount of traffic out and about when I went to work). And the one for our subdivision seemed busy enough a couple of weeks ago (see previous comment about traffic).
So I’m not sure that all garage sales are failing.
Our neighborhood had a mass garage sale about a month ago. It was well-advertised, and we had lots of people pass by, but at the end of the day, we’d have been money ahead to just take the nice stuff to Goodwill and the iffy stuff to the dump, then had a free Saturday.
We sold about $50 worth of stuff, which was all “profit” as someone else did all the advertising. But break that out into how many hours spent watching people drive past and watching people paw through things, we couldn’t even pay ourselves minimum wage. Plus there’s the value per square foot of space in the house and/or garage to “warehouse” stuff before the sale, making it a losing proposition.
This was our third rotten garage sale in as many years. The first was a moving sale where we were determined to convert as much “extra” stuff as possible into money, but with three other foreclosures on the block, the local economy was simply gone. Last year, it was beastly hot on the sale day, so we figured that kept people away so we were willing to try again, but no more.
I wonder if people are just tired of collecting stuff. I just walked my dog around my condo complex at around 11 p.m. and saw that a portable TV with a built-in DVD player is still sitting next to the Dumpster, where it was when I set off on my bike ride today at noon. You’d think someone would at least carry it home to see if it works. It’s not a hi-def TV or anything, but still–it’s free. Hmmm, maybe I’ll go get it and take it home.
Oh, also? The bed bug infestations we keep hearing about might also be a reason why people aren’t buying stuff at garage sales or picking up dumpster bargains.
I agree the bed bug problem has really killed the sales of furniture. It isn’t worth it. Metal is OK to buy as it’s easily disinfected but wood or upholstered furniture isn’t worth the risk.
I find most yard sale stuff is way overpriced. I live in Chicago and can get a decent pair of Levi’s 501’s for 50¢ or a t-shirt for a dime at the thrift store. But go to a yard sales and they want at least a buck or more for a used t-shirt.
That was my mother’s experience> She worked a sale with a mothers of twins group, gathered her stuff, priced it, and then didn’t come back with enough to cover her time spent, gas, or lunch.
20+ years later, she still says “Fuck no” to the idea of another garage sale, and will box our stuff for Goodwill and drop it off.
The OP is like me. Anytime I put something up for sale on eBay–total failure. Usually there are just no takers; or, as happened one time, the program finalized my sale at a price far under the reserve. Since it was only a trivial item, I let the buyer have the item at that price, since it wasn’t their fault.
Up here in Canada, we don’t get tax receipts for taking items to Goodwill.
We are having our complex garage sale this weekend and I expect to get no money out of it. However, what it is good for is decluttering. You see, anything you put up for sale in the garage sale either gets sold or goes to goodwill. It is not allowed back in the house.
Since the kids get to keep any money from the sale of their stuff, they part with things making my house a more liveable place.
I have no actual garage-sale experiences, but a related one leads me to suspect that garage sales are alive and well around here, at least.
I recently moved; among other things, I moved my club’s prop shed (a bunch of costumes, theatrical flats, and other props for our games). Last Saturday, a bunch of the other members came over to help me sort the stuff and put it away in my new garage, which entailed moving most of it out into the driveway.
In the two hours the stuff was out there, at least 5 carloads of people stopped to ask if we were having a garage sale. There were no signs up anywhere in the neighborhood hinting that any sales were in the offing, and it’s a quiet street. Evidently, these people were just wandering around, looking for stuff in driveways. Or maybe they can follow the smell of dusty fabric, or something. Regardless, there definitely appear to be people actively seeking garage sales in this neck of the woods.
I thought this thread was going to be about the other side of the transaction, not finding anything to buy at sales. The on-campus neighborhood I live in had their official yard sale day this past weekend, too, and although it’s usually mostly baby-clothes sales, the sheer number usually means I’ll be able to find something, but this year, nada. So I hopped on my bike and rode around the city looking for signs, and still didn’t find anything in the south half of town. I eventually ended up following a series of signs way the heck out several miles down a washboard road, where finally I picked up some books.
Yeah, that’s pretty much what I do, though there are also a few streets where you can always find the garage-sale signs, and I do a run up and down those streets, too.
We are moving next week, and had a yard sale last weekend. I did precisely the same thing, and the kids got rid of a crap ton of clutter. No, neither made a huge amount of money, but to a 10 year old, $20 bucks for a morning of unloading busted bikes and outgrown toys and clothes is a decent haul. The Boy made a little more than that, and was equally pleased.
And I’m glad that I don’t have to pack and move that carport full of crap… just a couple of boxes to drop off at the charity store. (And the money I made was substantial enough to make me feel like I didn’t waste my time - about $550. That was mostly a couple of larger items. Even so, less stuff + more money = win!)
Did you guys advertise at all on Craigslist? Lots of young couples who are on a tight budget don’t really read local papers anymore, even if they’re free. And they go for specific things; people don’t really have the time to go through a lot of stuff anymore. They go for what they want and leave.
Helping the SO’s mom clean out her garage, she advertised in the Pennysaver and everyone that came was a grandparent.
Then the SO and I advertised on Craigslist and everyone was an expectant or young mother or young father.
We’ve been playing with the idea of a garage sale. Mr. Kiz thinks it’s a great idea, even if we make a smidge of $. OTOH, I couldn’t be bothered. I’d rather take the tax write-off.