Hey. I like fruitcake. Well, I like the fruitcake I make.
Chess sets, a lot of people buy them thinking they (or their children) are going to have a wonderful, intellectually stimulating adventure playing chess; then quickly get bored because it’s not as easy as the latest XBox or Playstation game.
Old baby clothes.
Kitchen gadgets of the type usually seen on late night infomercials.
And not all yard sales have vinyl records, but the ones that do will almost always have an album by Mantovani and/or Herb Alpert.
In Chicago, in every Yuppie neighborhood, you see these and you see young white adults in their 20s using them. They are used a lot in the Yuppie set.
Don’t forget this guy:
Person trying to pay for four items marked “.25 cents” with a penny.
While I don’t disagree with you, I know lots of avid chess players that are under 20 and use computes to play chess. That way they can play against each other and improve their skills against the computer. I think that is where the real advantage of computer chess lies.
I used to like yard sales, but ever since eBay and “Antiques Road Show,” people think their worn out crap is worth millions.
I put on at least one (sometimes two) garage sales a year for the non-profit I am a board member of. We usually make around $1500 each sale selling junk.
The night before the sale, we board members can be found sorting through the junk donated to us to find, organize and price the items. Each time we find something interesting, we have a good laugh over it and have another good laugh when someone actually buys it.
Previous fun finds have included:
A brand new toilet seat still in its packaging. This sold pretty early and we got a whole $5 for it.
Furry Farrah. It was the famous poster of Farrah Fawcett, done in a furry material, with a dowel through the top and a string for easy hanging. It was probably 16X24 inches and in very good shape considering its age. Again, someone snatched that up real quick.
We have a pretty good group of people who will donate really nice stuff to our sales. When we redid our kitchen, I kept the old appliances and donated them to the group to sell. Those went easily, they were in good shape and I knew they worked perfectly. When my husband got a new mountain bike, we donated his old one. The parts on the bike were all very good, he just upgraded. Early on there was a guy looking at the bike and he wanted a “cheap” bike for his brother who wanted to start mountain biking. He offered $75, which was more than we thought we would get for it. We donated a treadmill, bookshelves, lots of stuff that was usable, but just not by us anymore. We got the tax break, the group got the $$.
I have picked up some very useful things at our garage sales. I had been considering buying a cake plate with a dome. For some reason, I decided to wait and found a perfect one at the yard sale. My sister was just starting out and needed everyday dinnerware. We found an adorable, very 50’s full set of plates, bowls and accessories. She has grown so fond of the set, it is unique and was cheap.
I do question some of the items we get. VHS tapes? Does anyone really use a VCR anymore?
While I understand your group actually MAKES money doing this, I must tell a story. I also understand folks selling old stuff accumulated or not used or no longer needed over they years.
A friend had a coworker. Every year she had a big garage sale, selling all the crap she had bought/replaced in the previous year. Every year she would tell him how many hundreds, if not over a thousand dollars she “made” by selling stuff.
Given that your often get pennies on the dollar when you sell at garage sales he would always point out she paid many thousands of dollars to make the by comparision pittance at her sale. And that if she would just shop smarter/less often she would make way more money 
We had one a few weeks ago, and did decently well. I even sold an accordion and an acoustic guitar. The guitar was part of the whole package - music stand, case, a couple of books to teach yourself how to play, and an electronic tuner. One guy showed up, looked at it, got the tuner out and tuned it, played 5-10 minutes of pretty good Kansas, Eagles, and Bob Seger, and decided I wanted too much for it ($75) He left his phone number, in case it didn’t sell.
Later another guy wanted just the guitar. He played it for a few minutes, liked it, and offered $40 for just the guitar. He had all the other stuff. I countered at $50, since the rest wasn’t worth that much without the guitar, and it would likely not sell. He hemmed and hawed, played a bit, offered $40 again with no luck, and finally handed me a $50 and left with his guitar. He was barely out of the driveway when another guy there spotted the case, and decided it would fit his guitar perfectly. He was delighted that it included the rest of the stuff, too. $15 and it was all his.
If the tapes are of movies that have not been released on DVD yet or that have only been released with significant editing from the theatre movie version, they could be quite valueable. I cruise garage sales specifically for VHS tapes.
The other day I hauled my 2002 50" Sony rear projection to the recycle center (too costly to repair). The guy directed me to where the TVs collected that week went. I expected to see a bunch of tube sets from years past in their large black plastic enclosures.
I shit you not about 90% of the sets they had were the old console types with wood cabinets and dials. Holy shit! How long had these people owned these sets that they were just getting rid of in 2010?
Fallout from the digital conversion. People held on to ancient analog sets, working or not, thinking they would be worth something. A year later the word is finally out. Dump them.
I like old mixed tube/solid state color sets since they had really good tuners that could get distant stations. Doesn’t matter at all now.
Some of those ancient sets lasted a loooong time. But I would say they probably belonged to old people who had them since the 50’s and just never got rid of them - when they stopped working, the sets were put in the basement or attic. Then, after the old folks died, the kids cleaned out their house. At one time, you could put just about anything out on the curb to be picked up, or take it to the dump. Now you have to make an appointment to haul your busted TV someplace and pay them to take it.
I rememberd that the B&W TV was in my parents room, and the huge 25" console TV was downstairs…then I got the B&W TV, the console went to my parents room, and it was replaced by a HUGE 27" TV.
Many years later, we moved the ‘old n busted’ 48" to the guest bedroom, the slightly less old 32" TV to our room, and installed a shiny new 52 inch in the family room and realized I’d reached old-fogeydom when you could tell how old our family was by carbon dating our TVs.
I think there’s always exercise equipment in there, not just infomercial stuff.
My extended family has a habit of buying and then passing around equipment like treadmills, bikes, rowing machines, cheap benches, etc. Eventually we get tired of moving it from family to family and someone sells it in a garage sale.
The elderly, who often have large tape libraries and don’t want to update, seeing as they took so long to learn how to use a VCR, and that for them DVDs don’t look that much different. Besides, they don’t have much time left to enjoy those new DVDs.
Parents, for kids’ rooms. Stacks of kiddie tapes can be found at any thrift store, and it’s no moss if a VCR is destroyed.
Slightly OT, I know.
Ooh, ooh, the exercise gadget with the ropes and the pulleys. The one that attaches to doorknobs? There’s one in every yard sale!
Do you and I mean something different by “tea service,” and if not, why wouldn’t you use one if you serve tea socially?
I see them at EVERY garage and estate sale. I wonder how often they got used. I think now, more than in the past, people use normal coffee cups for tea rather than delicate, ornate, floral-pattered cups, plates and pots.
If I’m just making a cuppa out of a teabag, or a pot in the morning, I’ll use a regular mug. If I’m having friends over for tea, though, I’ll use the good china. (I have several sets.)