NEEDED: Garage Sale Advice ...

I don't think we'll ever do it again. Anyway, after we made the goal (I forget, $400, $500?) we pulled back a few items and put up a sign: FREE! Just to get rid of the stuff. Oh my God. The only stuff that didn't get taken: old computer monitor and keyboard.

Some lady drives up in an SUV, says she's remodeling her attic to be a library and asks if it would be rude to take all the free books. On the one hand I was a little disgusted that she apparently didn't care what the books were about, she just wanted to line the walls. (Why? To appear intelligent?) On the other hand, I wanted to get rid of those books. Sure, take them. I should say that weeks before the garage sale I took the books that I thought had some value and sold them to a used-book store.

 

My condo assoc. has one every year and it was a few weeks ago. I do it more for fun than to make money, but all told we all made collectively about $500. I sell really nice stuff, however don't be surprised at the crap people will buy. You can buy little price stickers at Wal Mart, in the office supplies section. Buy a case of bottled water and sell it for $1.00 each. Sell 4 and you've made back your out of packet cost. I had a roll of quarters and $25.00 in dollar bills for change. If you're running an ad, put "no early birds" in it, however expect people to start showing up 30 minutes before.

Good luck and have fun--

 

When I was a kid, my mother used to organize a neighborhood garage sale. See if you can get others around you to sign up too, and you should see more people. Plus, they can help offset the cost of buying ads in the local papers.

 

Whenever I've done a garage sale, I start wheeling and dealing once the clock hits noon. I'll tell people if they give me $5 they can take however much stuff they want.

Before I got married, I had one and sold everything that was left at noon for $50. The guy had to go get an extra truck to haul it all away. I didn't care, it saved me the trouble of hauling it down to Goodwill.

 

Definitely in the team picture.

 

Amazon.com. I went through my CDs, DVDs and books and decided to keep only about half of them. The ones that are worth more than a couple of bucks I've put on Amazon and have made hundreds of dollars on them in about two months.

When you're listing items to sell it tells you how many others are available starting at what price. If there are 300 starting at a nickel, I don't list it. But you'd be surprised what some CDs go for.

 

Agree with that - $5 for a sack-full. Usually by that point, it's clothes & less-worthy stuff anyway. The "good" stuff goes early.
Keep some empty grocery bags on hand - some people, esp. if they buy several clothing items, want to bag their stuff.

good idea on the bottled water.
Price as much as you can in the days before, not that morning. You won't have time before people arrive. I also agree with a $1 table and 25-cent table - it'll save you having to put stickers on every single thing.
Try to get yourself a seat in the shade - it'll be a long exhausting day.

 

But is it worth the hassle of selling the CDs one at a time? That seems like a lot of trips to the post office.

 

When I've sold old CDs or anything really on eBay, I just pick one day out of the week to take my sold items. Don't make multiple trips, especially with gas as high as it is.

 

Thanks for all the advice, guys. Keep it coming if you think of anything else.

I got an ex-wife who wants to throw some stuff in, my neighbor too. Plus my mom said she's got some stuff. This may possibly be the too much for me to handle, but the thought of all that money is enticing.

Good idea about the price stickers. I had thought of that but didn't know where to find them. Also, I'm gonna have a boatload of old toys (baby-to-5 years old). I was thinking about putting all those in a $1 box. I have a ton of books too that I'm tried of lugging around everytime I move, but I don't want to sell them for a $1 apiece.

 

I love the idea of the $1.00 table, 50 cent table, etc, but I have no idea how you keep track of what item was on what table when someone brings you an armful of stuff. In the case of books and VHS tapes, we just do one sign with a price so that's easy...tapes $2.00; hardback books $1.00, paperbacks 50 cents. I guess it depends on how many tables of stuff you have. Also, do you have tables? I do this every year, so I actually bought 6' tables at Home Depot that fold in half that are awesome. They also come in handy at the holidays and birthday parties and such since my sister doesn't have a dining room table. And because they fold in half they don't take up a lot of room and I store them in my garage.

This year, we had a ton of clothes and I made a new investment in rolling garment racks from Bed Bath & Beyond. You have to get the commercial ones with the wheels. Do not try to get cheap ones...they won't be able to hold the clothes. With the 20% off coupon, they were about $60 and they collapse flat.

Fortunately I have a basement that we store this stuff in every year. My parents condo assoc. has one in July so I haul all this stuff over there too.