If you love it so much, why are you selling it?

Posted by Meghan in Hey Sellers | Comments Off on If you love it so much, why are you selling it?
27April2007

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!)

The importance of good signs

Posted by Jenny in Hey Sellers | 2 Comments
26April2007

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 their 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!

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!)

Cookbooks we did not purchase on Saturday

Posted by Jenny in Book Report, Um ... No Thanks | 4 Comments
24April2007

Scary Cookbooks

I am not sure what I will do without the 1978 Carbohydrate Guide or The Classic Wheat For Man Cookbook, but I’m sure I will manage somehow.

Phinney Sale Day Spoils

Posted by Jenny in Junk In My Trunk | Comments Off on Phinney Sale Day Spoils
24April2007

Junk In My Trunk - 4/21/07

Just some of the crap we got on Saturday … not shown are about 20 books and a zebra-print sweater twinset that I bought, as well as Meghan’s box o’ dishes and probably other stuff I’ve already forgotten about!

Phinney Neighborhood Sale Day Recap

Posted by Meghan in Sale Tales | 3 Comments
23April2007

Phinney Neighborhood Sale

After trading a few emails Friday afternoon about how excited we both were to hit some sales, working out the time and would we both need to get money (a common theme), we chose to go to the sales an hour early. Something that we both don’t like (o.k. despise is a better word), but we thought we would risk it. Just to get the lay of the land.

I always spend a ton of dough at this sale, but I feel guilty taking more than $100 out of the bank machine, even if I know I will have to go back and get more money.

The weekend started with sprinkles and overcast, but it wasn’t enough to deter us from starting out at 8:00 am. We both started to get the feeling that some folks didn’t set up their sales because of the chance of rain, but that made it easier to get down the narrow winding streets. We didn’t see very many of the creepy pickers that seem to be there every year or the large trucks loading up furniture. Last year I tossed a small bag of garbage into one guy’s car, since he insisted on double parking and never shutting his car door.

The first sale was pretty good; right away I grabbed a really nice cardigan sweater. The woman mentioned that she hadn’t had a yard sale in almost 20 years. Strange that her prices seemed to be about 20 years in the future, she was asking for around $20 a piece for her clothing. We ended leaving without a single item.

I think all told we hit around 50 sales in roughly 4 hours – not a bad day.

I purchased a large box of colored depression era dishes. I only looked at a few items in the box and thought I would risk it and gave her $30. When I was able to unwrap them at home, I stumbled onto a great set of interesting colors. The woman told me that dishes are called Modernware, but when I started to look into them, I found out they had been produced in the 1940’s by Hazel Atlas and are called Moderntone.

Other noteworthy items:

  • 50’s folk art Mexican bottle-cap man for $10
  • Early 60’s group photo of some men’s fraternal organization (I really love group photos)
  • Pink basket that will fit magazines perfectly

I purchased a pretty cool table for $7 (that I don’t need or have room for) that we couldn’t get into my car, no matter how creative I got. I asked to leave it until later that day or the next. It’s Monday and I haven’t phoned them yet.

The most important rule when going to (or having) a sale

Posted by Jenny in Hey Salers, Hey Sellers | Comments Off on The most important rule when going to (or having) a sale
18April2007

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.

Introducing Jenny

Posted by Jenny in Grab Bag | 5 Comments
14April2007

Now that Meghan has gotten the ball rolling I suppose I should introduce myself as well. I also grew up going to yard sales with my parents, along with thrift stores and trips to the crazy free box (really more like a huge free pile) at the park two blocks from my house in Berkeley, CA. I appreciate all of these to this day (not that there are too many free boxes around anymore, but there always seems to be a moving stream of random free stuff). But yard/estate/rummage sales are my favorites these days; it’s getting rarer and rarer for me to go into a thrift store, and I usually come out empty-handed when I do. With sales we usually have to hit a lot of duds before finding anything good, but I think there’s  a much better chance of actually finding something great (at a less-ridiculously-marked up price – the thrifts that think everything over 20 years old is “collectible” drive me insane!).

For the past few years I have really been more in “get this crap out of my house” mode than “go out looking for crazy weird cool and probably unnecessary crap” mode, but I still love the thrill of the hunt and coming across random bizarre things you never even knew existed, let alone that you must possess. A lot of why I like yard saling is almost from an anthropological expedition point of view. I have fun even when I don’t buy anything, although obviously it’s always better to come back with a few choice scores.

Meghan and I have been hitting thrift stores and sales together since around 1998 and for a while we would go to yard sales every Saturday for about six hours, ten months out of the year. Now it’s more of a semi-monthly kind of deal, and the days are usually cut much shorter since we both have creatures at home that we need to get back and play with (puppy for Meghan, toddler for me). But we’re both still pretty obsessed with all things having to do with sales and can talk about them endlessly. Which is why we’ve been saying for years now that we better just do a freakin’ blog about them already!

Introducing Meghan

Posted by Meghan in Grab Bag | 8 Comments
12April2007

I love a good yard sale and from an entertainment value standpoint, I love a bad yard sale. I have been going to yard sales for 30+ years. My formative years were spent being dragged screaming on Saturday morning to either a yard sale or the dreaded fabric store by my mother. I spent years going to thrift stores, but I now favor garage sales – with the added estate or church jumble sale tossed in. I love getting to go into people’s homes, unless they have recently died – that is always creepy, but can yield some great finds. Plus, I’m nosy and getting inside a person’s home for a sale is one of the few socially acceptable reasons to look around.

A few things to know about me; I don’t haggle (very often), I carry cash, I am not rude, and I seem to have an uncanny knack for finding really good shit. It’s said that the early bird gets the worm, but coming to someone’s sale an hour early makes you a complete jackass.

My dream is to take a vacation to The World’s Longest Yard Sale: The 127 Corridor Sale. 450 miles of yard sales covering a few states!

I am already thinking about the first of many sales this season, with what I would call the “spring opener” or what our neighborhood calls the Annual Phinney Neighborhood Sale. The Phinney sale usually has around 150 sales each year and it usually draws 2,000 shoppers. Tightly packed streets of double parked cars, women running down the street at some feeble attempt to “get the good stuff” – as if we would be looking for the same items! It’s almost too aggressive and has the added sting of more families moving into the area (aka less old crap and more new baby crap) but I seem to get something good (should I jinx myself and say great) enough to bring me back each year.