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Yard Sales

Goaldeje

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So my wife and I love to go to yard sales. I love the look on her face when she finds a pair of jeans for $.50, priceless! We go out most Saturday mornings with the younger two kids to see what we see.

Anyone else like to yard sale? Any good deals lately?
 
I banged on someone's door at 0530 last Saturday morning and asked if they'd take fifty cents for all the stuff they had out.
 
I banged on someone's door at 0530 last Saturday morning and asked if they'd take fifty cents for all the stuff they had out.

Damn, Sarge-for a while now I've thought you'd be a really cool guy to have in the neighborhood.

Now I'm not so sure. 0530? My body doesn't even want to admit that such a time exists!
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:bucktooth:

G., my mother got me into yard sales at an early age-I still love 'em. Mostly I used to go for books and record albums-I once got the complete works of Shakespeare for 25 cents.

I don't go to them as much now but still-it's amazing how generous people can get when they're trying to get rid of stuff.
 
Yard sales are awesome when they're done right. There's nothing I love more than getting something, whether for me or someone else, that I just know is so cheap that I feel like I'm robbing the people.

A few years back, I saw a yard sale where it looked like they had emptied the entire house onto the lawn. The people holding it were the adult children of the deceased owner. They didn't feel like dealing with it, so they were selling it all for nothing. There were so many killer things there, so we just started offering like $10 for a box of stuff, like books, antiques, whatever.

We spent $65 there, and sorted it all out when we got home. We hit the jackpot. One box was full of some German cutlery and dishes with Swastikas on them, which the owner had taken during WW2. We sold those to a local antiques dealer for $650. One of the books in the boxes was a first edition of A Christmas Carol. It was in rough shape, but we were still able to get $2,200 from a collector who wanted it for his mother.

Through various other things we sold from $20-$200 each, we ended up making over $4,000 over the course of a few months from stuff we bought for $65 at a yard sale.

Then of course, you have the down side of yard sales. You know the ones - the jackasses selling everything for 5% below retail , even though it's 20 years old, used, and needs work. My neighbor did this last weekend. They were selling a small coffee table for $50. At a yard sale. They had used it for 12 years, it had water stains from glasses not being sat on coasters, and it needed refinishing badly. His whole argument for the price was that it was Amish made, solid mahogany, and he paid $300 for it. Needless to say, it didn't sell. The next weekend, I convinced his wife to take off the tag and have people make an offer. The first lady that was interested offered $25, and they took it. I think the lady overpaid, but she liked it. I just don't get what's going through someone's head when they price all of their stuff for almost what they paid for it, then cry when they make no money.

When you do a yard sale, you gotta take the Walmart approach - sell it all for nothing. My dad's ex girlfriend used to have yard sales where she wouldn't price anything over $1, and she made a couple of hundred every time she had a sale.
 
You can get good deals at yard sales. My wife enjoys going. I don't go, although I've been a few times. Mostly junk. But I imagine if you go frequently to enough yard sales your bound to find that needle in a haystack, or as my father would say, even a blind squirrel finds a nut occasionally.

The worst is having your own yard sale. You've got something labeled as 50 cents and sombody comes to you and asks if you'll take 25. Really? That pair of jeans is too much at 50 cents, but 25 seems reasonable? Come on, when prices drop below a certain point it's lame to haggle.

We won't budge. We'd rather keep the item and give it to Goodwill at the end of the day rather than let it go to someone who's too cheap to spend the extra 25 cents.
 
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I used to like them when I lived in NOVA, but I've noticed the Yard Sales in Houston leave a lot to be desired. Not sure why that is - but I rarely check them out anymore.
 
Our community had a couple last year. I really need to get rid of some stuff. But I'm really thinking we won't make shti and it's better to get rid of the stuff to Value Village and take the deduction.
 
We don't have yard sales at our place; we prefer to use our local freecycle group. You have to be prepared to give things away, but the good thing is that you can often ask for something at a later date (if you are a proven freecycler), or get in quick when something you want is put up to give-away. Our most recent acquisition - a wide screen TV. However, we have given away things like computers, DVD players, TV's, camera gear, etc, all of which was gathering dust.
 
Just saw this thread. Last week, we got a vacuum for $5 and I got lots of teaching posters. This week, we got the little people clothes. The boy ripped holes in the knees of all of his pants last year, so I refuse to go to a store for him.
 
You all should have seen how giddy she was with her deals this week. Very excited!
 
Our niece and hubby are in the process of moving, and did a really stupid thing - advertised a Yard Sale on Facebook. They were inundated with people trying to steal everything. They ended up having to call the police.
 

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