Whatcha gonna do with all that junk?

Kim and I held our first garage sale [ever], this weekend. Having never organized one of these little endeavors, I think we both looked forward the event with a fair amount of dread. However, I'm pleased to say that it went well despite some extenuating circumstances.

We had been talking about having a garage sale since we moved into our current house, 2 years ago, but we always found some reason to put it off. Our normal course of action for shedding dead weight was to just drop our old stuff off at Goodwill. Over the years, we've given some pretty nice stuff away, including gently-used clothing, furniture, and electronics--the kind of stuff that Goodwill sells for top dollar. Kim and I decided it was high time we got a piece of that action.

So Kim took the reigns of the garage sale operation. The original plan was to wait for our neighborhood's annual garage sale, which is held each May. One of our neighbors [not sure which one] organizes this annual event, and each household is usually delivered an informational flyer about a month in advance. With a $2 contribution per participating household, the organizer takes care of all the signs and newspaper ads. Well, we waited about as long as we could stand to receive notice of the neighborhood sale, but we finally gave up on it and decided to fly solo. Kim placed a classified ad in the Austin American-Statesman [$20], and there was no turning back. Two days later, we received the flyer announcing the neighborhood garage sale.

Kim spent the better part of last weekend rummaging through our closets, our garage, and her CD's and records [all of my discs are precious gems] to select and price items for sale. Picking the stuff we wanted to sell was easy. But I found the pricing part tedious. What is the ultimate goal of a garage sale? I believe the goal is to get rid of old stuff. The profits and the convenience of not having to haul crap to Goodwill are secondary benefits. But isn't it American to want to maximize profits? I couldn't help overthinking the garage sale pricing strategy. Books, music, and VHS tapes were easy to price. Generally, we weren't going to price anything below 25 cents. However, pricing of small tools and appliances can be tricky. Garage salers are looking for a deal, and the serious salers will always try to talk you down. So the challenge is determining the maximum price that market will bear and the minimum price at which you're willing to sell. My strategy was to aim somewhere in between those price points. From my own garage sale shopping experience, I know that setting the price at maximum can make the seller appear unreasonable and unwilling to bargain, and many shoppers will just walk away. Then you're left with all your crap and no profits, thus defeating the true purpose of the garage sale.

In the garage sale business, you can strategize and advertise all you want. But you can't control Mother Nature. Major thunderstorm activity erupted on Thursday evening, and was expected to continue throughout the weekend. But Friday morning was sunny and bright, so we remained hopeful that Saturday morning would follow suit. Not a chance. Thunderstorms rolled in during the wee hours of Saturday morning. Luckily, by 7 AM the storm had calmed down to a steady drizzle. We still feared that our shopper turnout would be low, and we contemplated cancelling and waiting for the neighborhood garage sale in two weeks. But I knew people would come by: our $20 newspaper ad ran daily from Thursday through Saturday, and I believed the hard core garage salers would eventually make it to our neighborhood. And right as rain, a few customers started to trickle in shortly after our 8 AM start time. By 9 AM, the flow of shoppers was steady but not heavy. I noticed a lot of cars curiously circling our neighborhood before they stopped by our sale. It turns out that the neighborhood garage sale organzier had already placed large signs at the entrances to our neighborhood advertising the upcoming event two weeks in advance! Of cource most people didn't read the fine print and thought the sale was occuring. We were the only gig in the 'hood.

We ended up selling more than half of our stuff and turned a decent profit. Tools were popular, and were the first items to go; and we sold most of our small electronics and appliances [including a cassette deck]. I'm not sure if we sold any CD's. We managed to sell all but one of our VHS tapes, which were priced to go at 25 cents a pop. Curiously, Swingers--starring Vince Vaughn--was the only tape left, though we were able to sell Blues Bass for the Beginner [?].

Most of the folks that showed up were fairly pleasant. It was the usual suspects, mostly. You can expect a few "talkers" and some people that just don't seem right in the head, but nice folks for the most part. The only disappointment was the discovery that someone had stolen a plastic grocery bag containing a few miscellaneous attachments and dust bags for our old Electrolux vacuum. Nobody even made an offer on the vacuum, which was also for sale, so I thought that was an odd bunch of items to steal.

Overall, the garage sale was a much better experience than we expected. A big wad of cash in your hand and some free space in the house: it's a good thing.

Somebody better tell Vince Vaughn's agent that he's not so popular with the bargain hunter demographic.