Saturday was our neighborhood's annual garage sale...... Always an interesting time in the Bretonberger household. Throughout the year, Shelley collects stuff for the sale, which is always intriguing - she is ruthless with clutter, and I still don't understand her Hogwart's Sorting Hat method: "you, you will go in the garage sale"...... "you, you will be donated to charity"..... "you, you will be thrown out". Meanwhile, a few days before the sale, I root around the house for things that are in closets or on shelves which haven't been used for a while. Shelley makes all the arrangements with friends to borrow tables, make signs, stop at the bank to pick up rolls of change and dollar bills...... I just ask "when does it start?"
I'm going to guess a lot of friends are like this - one partner doing 90% of the work, the other basically being a free rider. This said, I'd bet (as in past garage sales) that nearly 50% of the proceeds came from sales of "my" stuff. The 2 biggest items (golf clubs, and a stereo receiver, both of which were actually sold to friends before the sale actually started) came from my cache, so there's that.
I was thinking of live-blogging the sale itself, commenting on the activity and characters, but decided not to. As it turned out, this year things were really slow, and I could have done so - I think there was less advertising about the sale, and it wasn't clear when it would start (7:00 a.m, as it was). For this reason, traffic was light, and there weren't 10 people stacked up waiting when the doors opened. But we did have some fun, here's a bit of a "best of" (or "worst of," depending on how your perspective):
- Surprising how relatively little haggling there was this year. I'm used to having to negotiate to sell just about everything...... this year, I'd guess that about 2/3 of the stuff we sold was at "list" price. Odd.
- This said, the most frustrating person we dealt with was as a result of haggling. It was a lady...... she was interested in an item we had marked for $3, and asked if we'd take $2. Shelley said "yes". A moment later she asked if we'd take $1..... "No, but we'll take $2." And she walked away. So we basically accepted her first offer, she wanted more, and then walked away when we wouldn't capitulate further. Good riddance.
- We reinforced that it's pointless to try to sell clothes at a garage sale (except for maybe baby clothes). Shelley had some beautiful dresses that she simply doesn't wear anymore, but only 1 of them was even tried on..... and it was by a young lady who thought it was too low-cut for her. Huh..... Color me surprised, someone from the younger generation who is that conservative. Wouldn't have expected that.
- In addition to the dresses, Shelley tried selling some excess (but still very nice) purses. We had a lot of ladies who would pick one or more of them up and say good things, then not get them. Then we thought we had pay dirt - a group of 3 ladies came up, grabbed about 4 of the purses, and started looking at other things. They grabbed a couple other things, and looked like they were going to buy them..... and then they put everything back. Almost like it was a fantasy to have the purses, but not reality. Odd.
- We also had a group of 3 middle-aged people who spent several minutes walking around and picking up several things from different tables. We heard them say several times "wow.... that's really nice" or similar things..... genuinely. Not the fake "oh, that's nice" you sometimes hear. And then, after a few minutes of being nothing but complimentary, they just walked away, never asking or making an offer on anything.
- We had our share of guys in pick-up trucks pull up to the base of the driveway, look furtively at our stuff, and drive away. Every time we saw one of them, we just looked at each other and said "no tools". Sorry guys, that ain't me.
- Had a little fun by putting a "Make an Offer" label on my forehead, to which we got 2 distinct kind of laughs. The first, from strangers, was a cute little chuckle. The second, from those who know me/us, was a nervous "no way would we want that!" kind of laugh. Hmmm.
Shelley will come up with the final total...... probably between $150 and $200 of stuff, and more than that, it's just nice to get some of that clutter out of our place and in the hands of somebody else who can us it.
Can't wait for next year.......