Yard Sale Bloodbath

Lately (as you may have deduced) I haven’t been picking up a lot of stuff at sales. OK, I did have my crazy rummage sale moment, but other than that, I’ve been extremely restrained. Part of the reason is just feeling a bit overwhelmed by the amount of stuff in my house and wanting to pare down on what’s already there, let alone bring in more random crapola. Well, I don’t think I would ever say NO random crapola, but I’m trying to keep it to random crapola that I really like and/or think I will use. Although obviously I have my weak moments (um, stretchy exercise cord thing with missing videotape?!). And it’s easy to justify a questionable buy by saying, “Well, I can always put it in our next sale.”

In my halfhearted attempts to de-crap-ify I’ve been unearthing things in my office/storage room that I’d bought at sales years ago and never used or displayed: a portable lime green 60s typewriter, a slew of random paperbacks, orange and black ski gloves, a needlepoint flamenco dancer portrait purchased from Meghan’s mom at the last yard sale we had just last summer. All of this is going into a big pile destined for our next sale (probably sometime in June if we can get it together). It always feels good to get rid of things you’re not using, and there is something especially satisfying about seeing it go off to a new home with someone who’s excited about it. Of course, it’s nice to make a few bucks too. But I do get oddly sentimental about some of the things I end up selling at sales. Not in the “I’m sentimental about it, so you have to pay more than it’s worth” way that Meghan wrote about earlier, but more like “this thing is so strange and great, and even though I don’t need it in my life anymore, I still feel that it should be properly loved and appreciated.”

Meghan and I seem to have a sale about once a year. Sometimes it’s prompted by one of us moving, but just as often it’s just because we decide that it’s time to lighten the load (and clear room for future scores). I think we’ve had about six or seven sales together, often with other friends or relatives joining in under the theory “the more, the better.” We always try to have the kind of sales we like to go to: lots of stuff, priced to make it go away.

Twice, when our sales have been indoors and we could set up in advance, we’ve done a “pre-sale” on Friday night, by invitation only. It’s extra-great when your friends get first crack at the good stuff, and it’s a fun excuse to have people over. At one sale I was getting rid of a lot of glasses, so I had a special offer: if you bought a glass, I would make you the drink of your choice in that glass, but you absolutely had to take the glass home with you. I did get rid of a lot of glasses that night.

The biggest and best sale we ever had was in March of 2004 … it was in Meghan’s old basement, and I must say, it was epic. More on that in a future post!

One of my pet peeves about going to sales is the “personal attachment seller.” I own many items that I love, but I don’t expect anyone to have the same feelings about something that I cherished for years. I love the sentiment, but once an item is chipped, stained, torn or dirty – please don’t expect me to pay for your sentimental value. I don’t care if you spent $100 on something; you treated it like crap, it’s not worth $3 now.

People get these weird ideas about pricing based on their personal feelings about the item. Here are three examples …

• “I could sell that on eBay for $60, so I want to get at least $30 for it.” If you could sell it on eBay, why don’t you? It’s not THAT difficult. I’m not going to pay extra because you’re lazy.
• “Oh, I really loved that. How much do you want to pay?” If you can’t take the time to price something, I don’t have the time to play games with you. I understand that you want a fair price, but I am not about to fall into the web that you weave. If it doesn’t have a price and you want me to guess what I think you want, you will be disappointed with my offer. Most times I will put the item down and walk away.
• “That was a gift, so I want XYZ dollars.” First off, why are you selling something a friend or family member gave you? Secondly, your yard sale isn’t a retail environment. I didn’t get up at 7:30 in the morning to go to the mall. Lastly, why would you think I care that you received it as a gift? For F*CK sake, just re-gift the item like everyone else.

When either of us has a yard sale the main goal is to make items “GO AWAY.” To make this happen, I tend to price low so I don’t have to drag it back in the house. If you are going to yard sales every weekend, it’s a good idea to try and pare down collections so you have space for more items. And if you want to make things go away, price them at what people are going to want to pay at a yard sale - don’t mark them up based on reasons that don’t matter to anyone except you. (Or if you want to overprice something, go ahead, but spare us the explanations!)

If you are going to have a sale, it is important to put up signs (unless you’re right on some main drag where you’re going to have a zillion people drive by, and even then it can’t hurt). We have seen some really, really bad signs in our time. One of the worst was on a post-it. Yes, a tiny little post-it with the sale info written on. This is not really effective.

Keep in mind that most people who see your sign will be driving by. Maybe they are looking for sales or maybe they’re just going about your business. If you want to tempt them into stopping, you gotta make it easy to read. Big black letters on a colorful background is usually best. The biggest thing on the sign should be an arrow pointing the way (make sure it’s the right way, dumbass), plus the word “SALE.” You may prefer to write “YARD SALE,” “GARAGE SALE” or the apparently now-popular “G-SALE,” but just plain “SALE” is fine. Smaller but still readable should be the date, hours, and address (or intersection), to help people get there and confirm the sale is still happening.

That is really all you need. Big arrow, “SALE”, where, and when.

Some people like to get creative with their signs. A little extra pizzazz isn’t bad, as long as it does not interfere with being able to read it. Little sparkles, interesting (but clear!) letters, or a few pieces of extra info are all OK. Just keep the readability factor in mind. One time we saw a sign decorated with little flowers, which unfortunately also looked like arrows and sent us around in circles - by the time we got to the sale we were pretty irked!

Here’s a good collection of photos of yard sale signs - the good, the bad and the entertaining.

Hanging up your signs the night before is usually a good idea since you’ll probably be scrambling to get everything together the morning of the sale. And taking down your signs afterwards is absolutely required. (More on that in a future post … this is probably my number one rant during sale season!)

One of the things we’ll be doing from time to time is laying down our version of the rules to follow when having a sale or when going to sales. Believe me, there are a lot of things that you can do to make your sale more successful, have a better time shopping, and avoid pissing off your fellow sale-goers and all of humanity.

Rule #1 applies to both sellers and shoppers: Don’t be a dick.

If you do nothing else, try and stick to that. You will have so much more fun and make everyone else so much happier.

There are countless examples I could give, and some of the ways one can express one’s dickishness will surely be dealt with in subsequent rules. However, here’s a prime example from just last weekend One of the sales we hit was a benefit sale at a church, raising funds for a leukemia patient. As we were checking out, we heard the cashier talking about how she’d sold something to someone earlier that day. After the sale was made, somehow it was discovered that she’d charged way less than she should have. The cashiers explained this to the person, who was like, “Sorry! I already paid!” and walked off with the stuff (whatever it was - I didn’t get that part).

Now, I can understand wanting to stick to the original price … but it’s not like the sellers just changed their mind on a whim or something. The cashier made a mistake and accidentally undercharged. At a BENEFIT sale. For someone with LEUKEMIA.

Don’t be a dick. Really, we’ll all thank you.