OUCH! Did the kid get his bike back?
Just wanted to tell you Eva Luna, what a great story that is! I like hearing things like that. God, a real Tiffany lamp. As a tremendous fan of good stained glass, I am envious. This story should also have gone into that “favorite grandparent stories” thread from not so long ago.
My best find at a garage sale was a box of figurines…many broken…that I bought for 25¢
They turned out to be My Little Pony figurines and after an afternoon of gluing them together I sold them all online and made over $400
People knew they had been broken and simply did not care!
God love collectors…they have kept my body and soul together for the last year and half since I began selling full time
Glad you liked it. I thought the one about how after 60+ years, he is still pinching my grandmother’s butt would have more universal appeal.
(And let me say both how glad and how sorry I was to go to a Tiffany show years ago at the Field Museum with them. Through the whole show, I was hearing them reminisce about the beautiful pieces that had passed through their inventory, and lamenting how little they’d gone for 30 years ago vs. what they are worth now. I kept having to remind them that if they’d held onto everything they’d ever bought and loved, they never would have been able to pay the mortgage.)
For a couple years I had a job selling classified advertising. This is basically a customer service rep job where you type the ad into the computer, it feeds through more computers, and is eventually printed. Some of the worst horror stories from that job were related to yard sales. One biggie is the people who missed the deadline and expected you to run down like in the movies and yell “Stop the press!” so their ad could run for that weekend. Ah, no, doesn’t work like that.
Also, the computer was set up in a way that it was fairly easy to schedule these ads to run on the wrong day. That’s a horror story–up at 5am to move all your stuff onto the lawn and then there’s no ad in the paper. I felt terrible for the customers when that happened, because there was really nothing you could do to help at that point.
When we had our sale to get rid of my dear husband’s bachelor treasures, it was amazing what people would buy. We actually put used cardboard beer coasters in a paper bag. I was almost embarrassed to sell that. Actually, it was the first thing to go!
My advice is, if you are having a sale, put your salesman/ marketing hat on and focus on the customers. It’s only one day. If someone shows up at o-dark-thirty and their money is green, sell them what they want. Just expect it. The early birds tend to be serious shoppers, and may even spread the word about your sale to others later in the day.
People do sell stuff they don’t realize is valuable. After Mr. Cameron’s grandmother died, his mother was going to garage sale a lot of her stuff. She said she’d found some blue and white china, and did I want it, because otherwise she was putting it out for the sale. I took it, not knowing what it was.
It was currier & ives china–about 10 plates, a dozen cups and saucers, and some serving pieces. I was telling a freind of mine who sells antiques about it and she said, “Oh, yes, that’s highly collectible.” I’ve seen it in shops since, at $10 a plate. Teapots sell on ebay for nearly a hundred (I know this because I don’t have a teapot and every now and then I try to buy one). My MIL would have sold the whole bunch for $15, and it was worth far more than that. Not picasso, or ming, or anything like that, but still.
Same here. Had a gf that was a veteran flea marketeer. Was at one once and she picked up this ratty, beat-up old metal candlestick that had been painted with gold spraypaint. She looked at it a minute before asking the guy how much. “50¢?” Without a word, she dug out two quarters and handed them to him. This was most unusual as she liked to bargain – not twenty minutes worth, but make a counter offer then accept his counter if it was lower than the original price. When we were some yards away I asked why in the world she shelled out half a buck for a useless candlestick. She handed it to me base up. It was sterling, about five ounces worth.
DD
I have had yard sales, but my funniest story, I’ve got no horror ones…is while buying. I was out saleing having a great time, & I walked up to a card table…many items, I was just looking, and OMG! there’s a vibrator!! not even pretending to be a massager, it was there just as large as life, (depending on what you’re used to)… freaked me out, I quickly left…if it hadn’t been so realistic, I’d have thought maybe they didn’t know what it was…didn’t even check the price on it…