This past weekend, I had a yard sale. I was horrified at what I witnessed, and seriously doubt I’ll ever have another.
First, I placed an ad in the paper stating that the sale would start at 7am. I had 2 different people knock on my door between 6 and 6:30 AM wanting to know if they could have an early peek at what I had for sale. I politely declined.
Then, during the sale, I had several people make ridiculous offers for things I had for sale. Example, I had a box of about 100 CD’s of recent artists that I was selling for 2 bucks each. One guy said that I’d never sell them and offered me 5 bucks for the whole box!! I declined. By the end of the day, I’d sold about 40 of the CD’s though.
Then, I had a lady who offered me 10 dollars for a brand new Aiwa stereo that I was asking 50 dollars for. I had won it in a raffle back in December and it was still in the box, unopened. I priced one at Circuit City and it sells for 300 bucks.
Then, I had a lady steal a small silver jewelry box that I had for sale. I didn’t confront her. I figure someone who will steal might also be someone who would carry a knife.
My grandmother recently gave me a book of “helpful hints” on how to pinch pennies. One of the suggestions was to show up early to yard sales and try to offer a low-ball price on items. Having * had * a yardsale in the past, I felt like writing to them how irritating this is. I know that when it happened to me, I refused the sale just because it irked me so.
I also had items stolen from my yard sale. A woman actually left her car running in my driveway, dashed up, grabbed an armload of books that I was selling for a quarter each, and fled to her car. She almost wrecked trying to get away. She needn’t have bothered: I was too dumbfounded to move.
Now, I have been guilty of offering a low amount for a box of books. I usually wait until they’re putting everything away for the evening, and then offer a few bucks for a box of them. Usually, they take me up on it. However, I’d never try it at the beginning of the day.
I have had people sneer at my offerings. Now true, I have had some crap out, but I’ve had people scoff at nice things, too. Probably thinking I’d cave in shame and offer it for half price or something.
I was trying to sell the baby swing that I’d used all of 15 minutes in my son’s infancy. It was in pristine condition, so I put a price that was about half of retail. I knew I could get that much or more by listing it in the paper. One women snorted and said it was a “ridiculous” price for a garage sale. Whatever, lady, send out the pricing police.
I had people fight over a window fan once. No kidding. One man wanted it and had walked over to me to ask questions about it. In the meantime, someone else picked it up to purchase it. I felt like a playground monitor. I mean it was REALLY awkward; neither one was willing to be gracious about it. Creepy.
Most memorable customer I dealt with: I was selling (among other stuff) a cubic zirconium (or equivalent) ring. I was asking $5. I’d gotten it for free when I’d mail-ordered some other stuff, so whatever I got was gravy. A woman came up to look at it. She got out a jeweler’s loop to examine it. She offered me $2. Something about her ticked me off, so I stood firm. She kept picking it up and looking at it as if it was the Hope Diamond. She offered $4. I declined. All told, she hung around about 30 minutes before she finally decided she’d give me the $5. Too weird for words.
I had a woman argue tooth and nail that the cracked and glued back together, mass-produced, cheaply glazed vase with dragons on it was in fact priceless Ming dynasty china. And that in only giving us the dollar or so we were asking for it, she was depriving us of the fortune that could be made if we, say, took it to Christie’s or Sotheby’s. Granted that I am no expert in porcelains, but the thing was clearly extremely modern, you could see how the vase had been machine glazed. I told her if she took it and made a fortune on it, that would be her very good luck. I suppose at least she was trying to be honest but it was quite odd.
I’ve had a few garage sales in my time, since I seem to move every couple of years. The knocking on the door early thing ticks me off too. I put a sign on the door last time that read “If you know on this door before 7 AM not only will I not sell you anything, it’s possible you will be shot.”
Made no difference.
I had one guy offer me $30 for a lawn mower that barely worked. I had, oddly enough, picked it up at a garage sale for $10 three years before, and priced it at $10. He insisted that I take $30 for it. Not a dime less. I felt the fool standing there arguing with him that it wasn’t worth $30, it was barely worth $10, but it in the end I took his money.
Looks like Lissa’s garage sale lady and mine got together to go bowling, or were the same person. I don’t think she got what she wanted though.
We had a bunch of T-shirts sitting out, my dad was a runner and got them all the time at races, and the kids had outgrown a ton of thiers. The shirts were arranged on a table by sizes, but my daughter mis-labeled them and put the adult sizes sign on the kids side and the kid sizes on the adult side.
So the lady zooms up, leaps from her car, grabs a pile of kids shirts and a full duffle bag that was sitting nearby, then rushes back to her car and drives off. The duffle bag was supposed to be thrown away but somehow made it to the ground next to the shirts. Unfortunately for our dashing theif, it contained the nasty panties left behind by a friend of my daughter’s who crapped her pants while spending the night. She stashed them in the duffle bag, Welbywife found them and decided to throw the whole shebang away.
My family had a huge yard sale before we moved. All the stuff we were selling was inside the house and outside of it. The thing that irked me the most was that at least an hour and a half before the sale started, there were at least 10 people standing outside our window with their noses pressed against the glass watching us eat breakfast. Thank goodness a good family friend came by early and was outside “playground monitering.” I think it helped that he’s one of the biggest guys I’ve ever seen.
This isn’t ahooror story really, just a funny story. I had a garage sale a few weeks ago. It was one of those multi-family deals, myself, my mom and a friend went in together. We had a lot of fun the first day – drinking margaritas and yakking. One of the things my mom was selling was her old set of stainless steel flatware – she had basically an 8-place setting set, with a few extra pieces here and there, and some serving pieces. She had this marked for $20.00 and we got no interest in it at all – even on day 2 when everything was 1/2 off. The day after the sale we had the DAV truck out to pick up the leftovers, except for a few items – including the flatware set – we culled to try on eBay. The silverware set went for $245.00 on eBay! I was surprised to see, at the end of the auction, that the lady who bought it was local. It turned out that she lives less than 3 miles away from me! She actually dropped by on her way home from work to pay me and pick up the set. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that she could have saved $230.00 if she’d been garage-saleing the weekend before…
My yard sale horror stories mostly involve my wife’s dismal bargaining skills. Let’s say there an item…an old fan, say…that she has put a price of $10 dollars on. I swear I have many times heard her do the following:
Customer: “$10? I’ll give you 8.”
Wife: “I’ll take 5.”
Customer: “Sold!”
She’ll explain that she really only wanted to get rid of the fan, any money at all was gravy, but I’m like, why did you waste everyone’s time putting $10 on it if you were willing to give it away? And why UNDERBID the buyer?
From what I remember we never had people show up too early…maybe they just don’t do that around here.
And if anyone ever grabbed a handful of stuff threw it in their car and drove off they would get a rock through their rear window from me. Unbelieveable.
I’ve told this story before, but it still cracks me up. My husband, back in his drinking days, decided to go garage-ing. A guy in the neighborhood had all this really great guy stuff out on his driveway. Drills, hammers, workbenches, saws, you name it. My husband found a screwdriver that was just what he needed to round out his collection. He goes up to the guy and offers him five bucks. The guy just glares at him. Turns out he was just cleaning out his garage and NONE of the stuff was for sale!
When my husband goes to that big toolbox in the sky, I’m going to have the best Guy Garage Sale that ever was. He has tons of really good tools. Grinders, compressors, polishers, saws, retractable extension cords, all the stuff that will make a guy swoon.
I have never held a yard sale that I advertised. Normally what I do is get everything set up, then dash down toward the main intersection with several signs pointing to our house. That way, I can start when I want to. Around here, people just drive around looking for yard sale signs, so that’s in my favor.
Although I know why people sneer at stuff you’ve got on sale–they’re trying to beat you down on the price-- I’ve always felt it was counterproductive. At least when I’m the seller; it usually pisses me off to the point that I wouldn’t sell anything to them if they doubled my asking price. I figure that dissing the merchandise gets the whole transaction off on the wrong foot.
So lately, when I’m the buyer, I’ve tried something different. I praise the thing I’m trying to buy. “Gee, this is really neat, and I like a a lot; but it’s a little beyond my price range. Would you take XX?” Works surprisingly well.
Or I just pay the asking price. Seems to me that a lot of negotiations are just a dominance play (like $2 either way would bankrupt anyone :dubious: ), and I don’t want to play that game any more; it’s undignified and crass.
Kalhoun, your husband and my father could probably fill a couple enornous tool shops together. My Dad’s a former jeweler/watchmaker with a woodworking fetish.
In my parents’ small house, he has three workrooms filled with stuff. It used to really piss me off before I moved out that he had all this space, and I had only my bedroom for my sewing things, beading tools, fabric stashes, dressform…
Actually, it still pisses me off.
It also scared me that he had welding gear- including oxy tanks- in the workroom next to my room. If we ever had a fire, I figured they wouldn’t find anything but shreds of me.
So yeah, I’m not looking forward to going through all his stuff when he (God forbid) dies or moves into a smaller place. No, no one offer to come help. We’ll manage, and dammit, I get the welding gear!
I’ve had it all happen – including the theft. Yup, I’ve even had this happen once when I was dumb enough to clean out the garage the day of the town’s annual Big Garage Sale:
Here’s another one: when we did the last garage sale, everything was out front, priced and organized. And someone went into the garage to poke around for other things that they wanted. . .
Which is why we much prefer to donate old clothes, etc. to Community Services for the Blind and take the tax write-off. Garage sales can eliminate any remaining faith in humanity . . .
