Live Blogging the Garage Sale

I hate garage sales. That said, you can imagine how disgusted I am that it’s 6:54 on a Saturday morning and I’m sitting in the driveway waiting for people to come and haggle over stuff I’d rather just throw away. We’ve already had customers. Two women on bicycles stopped in at 6:05 and promised to come back for the Playskool scooter and a very nice set of youth golf clubs. Let the fun begin!

This way to the crapapalooza!7:03 You know, I’m actually sort of proud of the signs I put up at 5:45am. I hate when people put out shabby, hand-drawn signs that look like they were made by mental patients. Keep an eye out for those. Actual mental patients probably price their items poorly, yielding big deals!
7:05 Walkers stop by and promise to come back later. Great! See you then!
7:32 Zack is going around re-pricing things he thinks are worth more. It’s tough seeing your treasured playthings sold for $.25.
7:47 First cash transaction: $50 for a huge pile of assorted junk. $50? Maybe I was wrong about this…
8:10 Holy crap! It’s getting crowded…people are buying our garbage. Amazing.
8:39 We could have sold my bicycle three times by now. It’s a bronze green Raleigh Sport built in England in 1967. It came to America the same year as Sgt. Pepper. “A good year for England,” commented one shopper. Indeed. I got it at a garage sale for $10.
8:50 If I were producing a TV makeover show, I’d go looking for subjects at garage sales.
8:59 Just went looking through the house for more stuff. In the basement I stopped briefly near the boxes full of albums. No way. Not selling either copy of Sandinista.
9:15 Tech note: Yes, I’m outside with the laptop. Hooray for wireless.
9:25 I don’t speak Chinese, but I’m pretty sure the Chinese woman just said, “Wow…what a lot of crap.”
9:28 Just sold a knife to the Chinese woman for $1. Ha! Who said there’s a trade imbalance with those people?
9:34 “How much for the Christmas trees?” Yes!! The awful pair of wooden things that have been in the garage for ten years! “Five bucks,” says I. Sold!
9:59 There’s a small pot on the table with no lid. Another old adage proven incorrect.
10:10 Right now: scariest assortment of people at one time.
10:22 Some guy just asked about cameras. I told him about the antique 6×9 folding pocket camera I almost put out for sale. Boring conversation ensued…
10:44 I will say this: most everyone who’s come by is pretty friendly.
10:53 OK…we now seem to have sailed into the garage sale horse latitudes. Customers are few and far between.
11:16 The third $10 bicycle is now gone…
12:09 OK…that was fascinating, but what was amusing three hours ago, is now just tedious —and it’s still not over. And it’s getting hot. So, let’s count the money: we grossed $285. Zack’s getting a cut of $50 since we sold a lot of his toys —and we ran an ad in the TU that cost $30. That’s a net of $205. Wooo-hoooo. Somebody kill me…

12 thoughts on “Live Blogging the Garage Sale

  1. Probably the only way to live thru a garage sale: complete emotional detachment…. like surviving the Battan Death March and making change…

  2. Oh no I love it, it is very creative and true. I hate garage sales but you meet some interesting people, some even normal but most from the Far Side.
    Garage sale shoppers are like Bingo game junkies, it is a cult.

  3. I was thinking that garagesalecam would be interesting —especially in time lapse.

    I had lots of people coming up and trying to pay me. They thought I was using the laptop to run the sale or something.

  4. What a lot of feedback! Maybe we’ll have another garage sale;. If I’m not mistaken there are bins and bins full of baby clothes in the attic…

  5. I have a Peavey 4x 10 cabinet with a moniter for sale that didn’t go at our garage sale, you could go on tour with this sucker , I have no tour planed so $ 300 takes all.

  6. Great post. I enjoy garage sales. I might mention that I had a hunting knife that I bought at a garage sale years back for 50 cents. Just sold it on the internet for $900. That’s what makes it interesting!

  7. Heya! I just got done having a massive, miserable yard sale and had to Google “I hate garage sales” to look for someone to commiserate with!

    We did make over $500 today, on things we needed to get rid of anyway, but it came, of course, with THE PRICE. The ridiculously early birds who do not respect your copious signs that say NINE am, and show up at 7 as you are dragging out boxes and hugging your 1st cup of coffee. The creepy professional garage-sale goers who forage around in my boxes, before we are ready to sell, it’s kind of a violation, of sorts.

    Since I’m on a “bitch roll”, let’s just add the incredible cheapskates, who KNOW the value of clothes from Gap, Abercrombie, Banana Republic, Nordstrom, and want to pay $1 or 50 cents for a barely worn article of clothing! On the rare occasion I hit a yard sale, if someone says $3 for a $50 hoodie, I’d say that’s a spankin’ deal! But nooo….

    It’s hard for parents who’ve invested major $$ dinero in toys and educational products to let them go for a buck. I mean $75 worth of a Magnetix building kit, selling for $10 and no one buys? They wanted it for $4. I got so T-ed off I took the set back and would rather donate it to a charity than undersell. Or am I wrong here?

    Lastly, there are the shoplifters. Sadly, 3 (maybe more) articles were stolen today, and nearly one more by a guy I caught, who just shrugged and offered me a dollar for a new Gap man’s hoodie. The others got away with the crime. Criminy…stealing is stealing, but it seems worse when its done under the nose of a nice, modest family w/two kids playing in the yard. This put a bad taste in my mouth more than than anything.

    Will I do another sale? Please God no. But that’s what I said last year after the last one.

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