Professional Yard Salers

This is a follow up to something I posted a few days ago.  (click here to read that)  This is working itself into a 3-part series.

With relocating out-of-state soon, and my work being slow in the summer months, finances are especially tight.  In an effort to reduce our volume of items, normally I would just pack up the car and drop off at the nearest Good Will.  But, what I should really be doing, is trying to make some return $$.

Someone once asked me why I don’t have a yard / garage sale.  We participated in one of those community ones that our previous condo association held, and I discovered something about myself.

I DETEST hosting a garage sale.  Everything about it:  

First of all, people are showing up to your place at 6:30 AM – perusing items and asking you about things before you are even set up.  (I’m not ready yet)  I realized, this is a tactic of males that are “professional Yard salers” – ready to catch you off-guard to knock price down even lower on items or pretend they didn’t hear you on price.  Those dirty rats quickly slap money into your hand and are already scampering off, loading it into their car …Wait! You only gave me $5.00 – it’s $25.00 for that piece of furniture not $5.00 – they know, they were just hoping you didn’t catch it…and play the surprise game – oh, I didn’t include the $20?  Sorry ’bout that.

Second even when prices are listed very low to start, it’s still not low enough for them.  We had my son’s toddler shoes out there.  We purchased them at Walmart or Target (or Payless) for fairly cheap.  When they are little, the shoes aren’t tattered as they grow out of them quickly so they are like brand new.  One gal, kept looking at the shoes and touching the various ones.  Basically “petting them” (no lie) as if they were puppies.  Refused to pay $1.00 each for them!  She stood there for a good hour! Finally, towards the end (when we just wanted to be done) fine – $1.00 for all 3 pair – and she snatched them up quickly and threw her dollar at us.  And was gone in a flash.

Pertaining to more expensive items…like electronics…  No.  You’re already getting a bargain.  No, we won’t drop down to $5.00.  Now, at this point, it became more like we’d rather give it away for FREE to the Goodwill, than sell it to you for just $5.00 – based on the principal alone of you low-balling us and pissing us off.  My husband would do something silly, like increase it to an outrageous amount.  Just to make a point.

I suck at dickering.  (hahah, oh, there’s a nasty joke there)  My husband is good at the pricing it higher, knowing someone is going to offer a little less and then you play the “up-n-down” game.  He’s in Sales.  He likes that – I, however, have absolutely NO PATIENCE for that nonsense.  $5.00 or I’m giving it to the Goodwill and not you. (sometimes this tactic works, a lot of times it doesn’t – but when $$ wasn’t as tight – I didn’t care.)  Move your butt on over to our neighbor’s driveway, see-ya.

Third it takes too much of your day!  I can’t stand having to be downstairs watching our items constantly and just hanging out – waiting for people to show, or waiting as they shop…just to have to play the bartering game.  Now, there were times we threw in something extra (that we knew wouldn’t sell on its own)…just so we could be done!  And, someone always has to be there watching (I just want to go upstairs for a second) but you can’t, as people will steal things.

You think I’m exaggerating?  My husband one day, pulled all the trash bags of recycled bottles out to our driveway, closed the garage door, and was going to pack the car to head to recycling.  Ran upstairs for a quick bathroom, and by the time he got downstairs (less than 5 minutes), someone had packed up all the bags and taken them!  They STOLE our recycle bottles.  We had 12 bags, and some boxes of bottles.

**So, yeah, the answer was simple, I don’t have Garage or Yard Sales, because I can’t stand them.

However, now that Facebook is starting to have multiple ONLINE garage/yard sale type of site.  I’ve been participating.

More on that later!