Poop Garage Sale tips [Archive]

KCrockaholic

10-20-2010, 10:28 PM

First thing first, I never pay ticket price! So over price your crap and let me negotiate you down so I feel like I got you.

Other than that, I only go to garage sales because I'm bored and enjoy seeing what crap other people have.

Ok. So does a good sign draw you in? Say you are 3 blocks away, and notice a garage sale sign and it's bold, written well, and looks clean. Would you prefer, or be more inclined to go to that sale over one that is written on CPU paper, and they used crayon?

Titty Meat

10-20-2010, 10:29 PM

Always price the good shit high so if they do bargain with you still make money.

joesomebody

10-20-2010, 10:38 PM

Ok. So does a good sign draw you in? Say you are 3 blocks away, and notice a garage sale sign and it's bold, written well, and looks clean. Would you prefer, or be more inclined to go to that sale over one that is written on CPU paper, and they used crayon?I tend to plot my course in advance based on a good classifieds ad. SOMETIMES on a whim I'll stop at a garage sale based on signage, but typically just a standard garage sale sign is as good as any other.

Be sure to talk up everything but clothes, unless you have baby clothes... I swear no one goes to garage sale for clothes.

joesomebody

10-20-2010, 10:40 PM

Also. Don't hold shit unless they pay upfront. Nothing worse than holding on to crap all day you could have sold for someone that never shows back up. If you're selling electronics, having an extension cord out there to prove that stuff works is a good idea. Especially if you don't want these strangers going into your house to "test" stuff when they are actually casing the joint.

Smed1065

10-20-2010, 10:44 PM

At the end of the day or when you get tired, price the rest off stuff for a lot price. Meaning get rid of the leftovers, no matter what.

KCrockaholic

10-20-2010, 10:56 PM

Alright. Good stuff so far guys. I'm needin some extra money before I move, so I'm hoping to get as many people as possible to at least stop by.

I read somewhere that it's a good idea to have the high priced/nicer stuff sitting towards the end of your driveway, so that those items are the first things seen.

KCrockaholic

10-20-2010, 11:02 PM

T-post Tom

10-20-2010, 11:04 PM

Sell canned soft drinks and grilled food. You can make good money if there's enough traffic.

KCrockaholic

10-20-2010, 11:22 PM

Sell canned soft drinks and grilled food. You can make good money if there's enough traffic.

Like 50 cents, or 75 cents a Coke/Pepsi?

T-post Tom

10-20-2010, 11:41 PM

Like 50 cents, or 75 cents a Coke/Pepsi?

Sure. You're the only game in town and thirsty folks aren't going to quibble. It helps if you have a kid doling out the drinks. Most folks aren't going to get surly with a little one. I've seen this done during big neighborhood garage sales and the food sales far outpaced the yard sale items.

kepp

10-21-2010, 07:46 AM

Don't just put price tags on items...write down somewhere how much they cost. I've had people pull off price tags and pretend they were missing. And I've seen people switch prices on items. You'd be surprised how dumb people can be over $1.50

Saulbadguy

10-21-2010, 07:46 AM

Your shit is worthless. Don't fucking price it like it is "gently used". Garage sales are for getting rid of shit, not to make a ton of money. If you think your items are worth something sell them on Craigslist or eBay.

Also, huge mexican families are your friend. They will buy tons of stuff, but they will want to make "package deals". Just roll w/ it.

loochy

10-21-2010, 07:48 AM

Have some actual good stuff out in they yard. Put up signs saying what kind of good stuff you have.

Don't just put out racks of 1960's clothes that smell like mothballs. Nothing screams "Crappy Garage Sale Here!" quite like the racks of smelly clothes or an old exercise bike and ab machine.

kepp

10-21-2010, 07:48 AM

Your shit is worthless. Don't ****ing price it like it is "gently used".

True except for baby stuff. We made over $300 this summer selling a lot of old baby gear like a swing, playpen, etc.

loochy

10-21-2010, 07:49 AM

Your shit is worthless. Don't fucking price it like it is "gently used". Garage sales are for getting rid of shit, not to make a ton of money. If you think your items are worth something sell them on Craigslist or eBay.

This. Just sell the stuff for whatever. People go to garage sales to get super cheap deals on old crap that might or might not be useful to them.

TrickyNicky

10-21-2010, 07:49 AM

Don't let anyone use your bathroom. Every other year I have a garage sale and I always get some meth-head that wants to use my bathroom even though there is a gas station that is a 5 min walk away.

Saulbadguy

10-21-2010, 07:51 AM

Oh, another tip. Open early, at least 7:00 AM. You will get the professional garage sale goers at that time.

Post ads anywhere you can. It may be too late for the paper, but put an ad in craigslist.

Rooster

10-21-2010, 07:51 AM

I don't usually stop unless I see tools or yard stuff. If you have any of those kind of items make sure it is visiable from the street.

Advertise your sale on Craiglist.

Signage is important. Balloons are always nice. :D

Iowanian

10-21-2010, 09:52 AM

Big Dog

10-21-2010, 09:59 AM

Ok. So does a good sign draw you in? Say you are 3 blocks away, and notice a garage sale sign and it's bold, written well, and looks clean. Would you prefer, or be more inclined to go to that sale over one that is written on CPU paper, and they used crayon?

I had a surprisingly successful garage sale 2 weeks ago. ($700) I bought the largest signs Home Depot had, and printed out/folded and taped my address and arrows to put on the sign. I had many comments from customers about my good signage.

boogblaster

10-21-2010, 10:05 AM

price the good shit high so you can come down ..
sell the bs cheap
give toys away to the kids .. mothers will buy more if you cater to their kids
have some man-stuff too
end of day sell the bs away in package deals

Groves

10-21-2010, 10:24 AM

I'd rather give them each $50 and haul the shit to good will and keep my saturday.

This times eleventy.

Put your 3 items with real worth on craigslist and take the rest to a thrift store.

Unless you have weekdays and weekends to burn and like just sitting and moving stuff around your yard for a few days before you eventually put it in the car and take it to the thrift store.

Or this might be fun.

Take it all in your van to *other* people's garage sales and just drop it off one broken blender and potty seat at a time. See just how few stops it takes to off-load it.

007

07-07-2013, 06:53 PM

Is it even effective to post a garage sale on Craigslist?

penguinz

07-07-2013, 06:59 PM

Instead of a garage sale donate it to charity. You will make more from the tax deductions that from the sale.

cosmo20002

07-07-2013, 07:00 PM

my mom, wife and sister have a garage sale every year. It basically pisses away my friday cleaning the garage and setting up and dicks up my saturday so they can make $40 each.

I'd rather give them each $50 and haul the shit to good will and keep my saturday.

This.

Also, sitting outside or in the garage most of the day on a hot humid shitty day in July = not worth it

Chief Pote

07-07-2013, 07:25 PM

Spend the time to put a price tag or sticker on all of your items. I HATE it when I have to ask someone "how much is this"? I always feel like they make up some high price and I end up putting it back. Why the fuck don't they ask me "how much do you have"? I mean really?

SAUTO

07-07-2013, 07:37 PM

My garage sales entail renting a large dumpster and throwing everything in it and calling the disposal service to come pick it up.

Then I tell my wife if she hadn't touched it in a year no one else wants to either
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Ace Gunner

07-07-2013, 07:49 PM

curbside and ebay are my friends

Ace Gunner

07-07-2013, 07:50 PM

Is it even effective to post a garage sale on Craigslist?

yes. not that you'll get anybody but nitty females looking for baby clothes

Johnny Vegas

07-07-2013, 07:55 PM

have punch and pie and they will come

Kylo Ren

07-07-2013, 07:55 PM

I tend to plot my course in advance based on a good classifieds ad. SOMETIMES on a whim I'll stop at a garage sale based on signage, but typically just a standard garage sale sign is as good as any other.

Be sure to talk up everything but clothes, unless you have baby clothes... I swear no one goes to garage sale for clothes.

Well, the funny thing is, you are totally wrong on both points.

1. We go to a lot of effort to make large clear signs with arrows and put them on 12 different street corners in our town. They are large, white signs with clear black lettering. They are very simple. They just say Garage Sale and the address with an arrow. We have many people tell us they really like our signs or they would have never known about our sales except for our signs. We have swarms of people every time we open our doors. Time and effort devoted to signs is a must.

2. Clothes...... specifically womens clothes, especially women's shoes are a BIG deal. Put them on a clothing rack out front where the women can see them. Make sure they are clean and organized and easy to hunt through. My wife is making a killing on her clothes. And the women shriek with glee when they see a table full of quality, clean, stylish shoes! My wife doesn't mess around. She puts pretty good prices on her clothes, especially the name brand stuff. She may go down a little, but usually she demands a good price. She's got good stuff and knows what it's worth. But, it is true that baby clothes are a dime a dozen at garage sales. And men don't really shop for clothes at garage sales.

We just made $800 this weekend. The last time we had a 2 day garage sale, we made $1000. If you take it seriously and put in the time and effort, you can get rid of your "gently used" or "pre-loved" junk for good money.

KCrockaholic

07-07-2013, 08:00 PM

I ended up making a few hundred from that sale. Mainly off the video games though. Nobody wanted my old WWF magazines, haha.

Kylo Ren

07-07-2013, 08:02 PM

Is it even effective to post a garage sale on Craigslist?YES! Big time! And on Facebook.

Kylo Ren

07-07-2013, 08:04 PM

Instead of a garage sale donate it to charity. You will make more from the tax deductions that from the sale.This is absolutely true in some cases and on certain items.

Shaid

07-07-2013, 08:11 PM

I have a garage sale to get rid of shit I don't want, the money's just a bonus. If you have a good local advertising web site to advertise the good stuff early, do it. Price most of your stuff to move so you don't need to have another garage sale later. It's fine to overprice a few things but if I go to a place and see overpriced crap, I usually just turn around and leave. I guess that's how I see it. My time is worth more to me than messing around with haggling too much. If you move most of your junk and make the same you would have and still have crap at your place to deal with, is it really worth doing a second sale, etc. To me it isn't, to some people it might be. I'd rather spend my weekend fishing.

Mr. Laz

07-07-2013, 08:19 PM

get other people to do the garage sale with you so you have more stuff

neighbors?

Psyko Tek

07-07-2013, 08:43 PM

Like 50 cents, or 75 cents a Coke/Pepsi?

I went to one were it was a buck a rock, but it came with a free beer

Rain Man

07-07-2013, 09:43 PM

Hire a bunch of actors to come in and be all excited about your stuff, and it'll make people buy faster.

tooge

07-07-2013, 09:45 PM

I wouldn't sell food. Some douche will sue you for food poisoning.
Items people want?
Bikes
Electronics
Bars, tables, other decent furniture
Antiques
Sports items
Tools
Kids toys
Name brand baby clothes
Outdoors and camping gear

KCrockaholic

07-07-2013, 09:57 PM

Hire a bunch of actors to come in and be all excited about your stuff, and it'll make people buy faster.

LMAO That shit probably does work. Just ask some family and friends to "look busy" when you see cars driving by.

listopencil

07-07-2013, 10:56 PM

Just push all of your old shit out of your garage and into your yard and catch it on fire. Make a bonfire. Sell marshmallows on a stick, s'mores, hot dogs, etc. And bottled water/cheap soda for a dollar a piece. Then bury the burnt out crap in your back yard the next day. Done.

P.S. It's not my fault if this doesn't work. I took an Ambien about half an hour ago but I'm pretty sure I'm still awake. Your mileage may vary.

Phobia

07-07-2013, 11:28 PM

my mom, wife and sister have a garage sale every year. It basically pisses away my friday cleaning the garage and setting up and dicks up my saturday so they can make $40 each.

I'd rather give them each $50 and haul the shit to good will and keep my saturday.

Yup. Never, ever again. I won't lose $400 a day and then give up my day off so you can make a couple bucks. It's not worth the headache at all.

Donger

07-08-2013, 08:01 AM

I know we have a couple people on here from Colorado Springs. If they want to stop by a sale in Fountain this Saturday, let me know. I've got a lot of WWE stuff from when I was a big fan. Sports stuff. Nothing Chiefs. So forget that. I'm keepin my Chiefs stuff.

Be prepared to hear a lot of Mexican.

Be prepared to have a lot of your crap stolen.

Don't let the Mexican-speaking woman let her kid use your bathroom.

KCrockaholic

07-08-2013, 08:38 AM

Be prepared to hear a lot of Mexican.

Be prepared to have a lot of your crap stolen.

Don't let the Mexican-speaking woman let her kid use your bathroom.

lol it's an old thread from before I moved to KC again. And yes a lot of Mexicans showed up.

Frosty

07-08-2013, 09:11 AM

We had a yard sale a couple of weeks ago. It always amazes me what people buy and don't buy. We had a couple of old scratched up Teflon frying pans that my wife just wanted to throw away. I told her to put 50 cents each on them and we can toss them later if they don't sell. They were almost the first thing we sold. :shake: We had some really nice kitchen items that we priced cheap that didn't go, though they were frequently looked at. :shrug:

Normally, I would just donate or toss stuff but we had a massive cleaning and ended up with a ton of our boys old toys as well as some pretty nice dishes and kitchen items (a lot of it was never used wedding presents). We also had a couple of bikes, an old table saw, some leftover building supplies and a composter ( the big one that turns), so we figured we would try the yard sale route to get rid of the stuff (I live way out in the sticks and Craigslist doesn't work well here).

We did fairly well but I'm not doing another one. From now on, if we can't donate it, it gets tossed.

Frosty

07-08-2013, 09:31 AM

As for tips:

Make your signs clear and readable without having to stop the car. It amazes me how many times someone will do a sign using a ballpoint pen on cardboard or some other unreadable method. I generally won't bother even trying to figure out where the sale is. I figure that if you are too stupid to make a decent sign, I probably don't want your stuff.

The flip side of good signage is to take down your signs as soon as your sale is done. Don't leave them up to molder away for next few months.

As someone said earlier, don't price your stuff like it's almost new. If it's an antique and worth something, a yard sale is a poor place to sell it. Also, just because someone paid 30 bucks for something ten years ago, doesn't make it worth $15 now. Personally, I won't pay more than 50 cents for a book, $1 for a CD or $3 for a DVD. I'm also not going to pay nearly retail price for a video game. I'm also not going to pay $10 for your old rusty wrench.

Make an effort to sort and price your stuff. I see sales all the time where people just put out boxes full of random stuff with no prices. I don't want to paw through your old dusty junk.

As an aside, since when is it okay to take a dog to yard sales? It's a trend I have seen more and more over the last couple of years, even big dogs off of their leashes. The dogs run amok, get into stuff, knock over stuff, crap in the yard where people are walking, etc. I don't get it at all.

Rausch

07-08-2013, 09:39 AM

If you're having a garage sale to make money you've already fucked up.

I always put stuff out there I both didn't want and didn't need. If you'll pay me a nickel for every piece of $3it I don't have to pay to dispose of you're doing me a favor...

Frosty

07-08-2013, 09:49 AM

If you're having a garage sale to make money you've already ****ed up.

I always put stuff out there I both didn't want and didn't need. If you'll pay me a nickel for every piece of $3it I don't have to pay to dispose of you're doing me a favor...

That was our attitude too. Almost everything was priced between $.25 - $1.

Old Dog

07-08-2013, 09:50 AM

Not recently, but I do have a somewhat amusing story from one we had a number of years ago. We had an older stove after the Mrs decided to get one of those flat top ones. I put $50 on the tag and that afternoon a man and his Mrs look the stove over and ask me if the price is negotiable. I proceed to tell them that to me a garage sale is about getting rid of shit I no longer need or want and that I have no desire to haul the damn thing to the dump and it sure as hell isn't going back in my shed so ANY offer down to and including, I'll back the truck up and you help me load it would probably be accepted. The fellow smiles until Mrs brain surgeon opens her yap and says, Well, will you take $35 for it?"
I said, "Absolutely" and the husband looked at her and asked if she didn't understand what I was saying....She looked at him like he had been speaking Swahili and says, "Yes, he said it was negotiable and I just talked him down to $35."

Rain Man

07-08-2013, 10:05 AM

Yup. Never, ever again. I won't lose $400 a day and then give up my day off so you can make a couple bucks. It's not worth the headache at all.

My wife and I planned a garage sale a couple of years ago, and then when we got serious and it came time to move it all to the garage and begin the laborious price tagging process, we decided that we should just put it in the car and take it to Goodwill. We both ended up happy with that decision.

On the money, though, it's to your detriment if you don't itemize your taxes. You're better off having the garage sale, I think. The last time we had one (10+ years ago), we made something like $400, which is nothing to sneeze at.

007

07-08-2013, 10:25 AM

Frosty

07-08-2013, 10:50 AM

I will say that the "negotiators" get irritating when they go too far with stuff that you feel that you have priced fairly. I have a small Snapper 2-cycle snow blower that is barely used. Kind of like this one:

http://images1.americanlisted.com/nlarge/snapper_single_stage_snow_thrower_electric_start_150_greenville_22180493.jpg

Since a snowblower is a tough sell in June, I had it priced at $25. I had some dude pull up and look at it. He started bad-mouthing it and then finally offered me $10. I told him no way and he got all butthurt about it, muttering "winter is a long way away" as he left.

Actually, snow is only four months away, so I'll wait until then and put it on Party Line for $100. :evil:

Dartgod

07-08-2013, 10:51 AM

My wife doesn't mess around. She may go down a little, but usually she demands a good price. She's got good stuff and knows what it's worth.

We just made $800 this weekend. The last time we had a 2 day garage sale, we made $1000.

That good, huh?

Kylo Ren

07-08-2013, 01:27 PM

That good, huh? MSNBC style editing? ;)

Dartgod

07-08-2013, 01:59 PM

MSNBC style editing? ;)

Hey, you tee'd it up.

Kylo Ren

07-09-2013, 08:45 AM

Hey, you tee'd it up. That's exactly what MSNBC would say! :)

Phobia

07-09-2013, 08:52 AM

My wife and I planned a garage sale a couple of years ago, and then when we got serious and it came time to move it all to the garage and begin the laborious price tagging process, we decided that we should just put it in the car and take it to Goodwill. We both ended up happy with that decision.

On the money, though, it's to your detriment if you don't itemize your taxes. You're better off having the garage sale, I think. The last time we had one (10+ years ago), we made something like $400, which is nothing to sneeze at.

$400 for 2 people to sit there for 2-3 days plus however much time you spent prepping? That's horrific. I won't do it. Honestly, I won't ever do another garage sale unless I move to a corner lot on a busy street and even then I'm only doing it on Saturday.

Frosty

07-09-2013, 09:07 AM

$400 for 2 people to sit there for 2-3 days plus however much time you spent prepping? That's horrific. I won't do it. Honestly, I won't ever do another garage sale unless I move to a corner lot on a busy street and even then I'm only doing it on Saturday.

Yeah, no way I ever do a two day yard sale. We did both of ours on Saturday only and 95% of the sales were from 8am 'til noon. After that, people that did show mostly just picked through stuff and didn't end up buying anything. I can't imagine that a second day would result in many sales (I never go to the second day of a two day yard sale).