The Garage Sale: Part ll

Hallowe’en was a lovely sunny day, which was just as well, as it really was the last chance we’d have at a sale. November just doesn’t seem right for a garage sale. I’d got everything ready in advance – priced and set out on borrowed trestle tables. At a little before 8.00am, I opened the garage door, to find that our neighbours had had the same 'last chance for a garage sale' idea. Perfect! Twice as many signs out, twice the air of busy-ness, a much bigger feel to the event! They hadn’t had a sale for 9 years, and we’d never had one. What were the chances of coinciding?

I started the day by going into the red. The neighbours’ sale included a Christmas decoration I’d always admired on their front lawn, a reindeer made of sticks with lights twined round it, a steal at $3. My neighbour did warn me that it was a nuisance, as it blew over very easily in the wind, but I reckoned we could think of a way round that. I’d sent Husband out to put up the signs, and he’d come back with a couple of Starbucks coffees which I thought we should also put down as costs of the sale, so that sunk us a little lower into debit. Then 9-yo discovered that the next door kids were selling hot chocolate at 50 cents a cup, from a big urn, and he started running up quite a total, until my kindly neighbour decreed that refills were free (which didn’t address the paediatric health issue of hot chocolate on tap, but did help reduce our incidental out-goings). I was beginning to wonder if we were we going to spend more than we made.

But it wasn’t long before the people started coming, and the money started dropping into my apron pocket. I’d priced things low, as I really didn’t want to be left with a whole lot of unsold stuff. But with the competition next door, and judging the responses of the first few browsers, I realized that the prices were too high, so I quickly went round with a sharpie and some more sticky labels. Now I’ve done a garage sale, I would say the key is to price down. We all love a bargain. People often asked me if I’d take a lower price, and I always said yes. Or I’d try and put together a compromise. If they wanted to pay a dollar for a jigsaw with a $2 price label on, I’d pick up a second one, and ask “how about a dollar fifty for two?” And then as they hesitated, I’d say “it’s hardly been used, and it’s a cute picture… look… Teletubbies… yup, VERY popular…”

As the day wore on, I noticed I got better at selling. At first I was all British – standing back and giving people the freedom to browse without being pestered (how many blogs have I read where Americans in Britain misunderstand this beautiful respectful distance as poor customer service!) But as time went by, I got friendlier, and chattier, and of course the more you engage people, the more you sell. If I’d thought to charge a dime for every time I answered a question about my accent, I’d have raised my takings considerably.

I really enjoyed the day. I loved meeting all those people – such a variety. Mostly I think they were folk at a loose end, wanting to get out and about, and stopping by for a browse just for fun. But some were clearly seasoned sale experts, who came up, assessed what was on offer, weren’t interested in small talk (not even with my accent!), and headed off, I’m sure, on a trail to many other sales. There was the occasional person who came in search of something specific – books, or toys for visiting grandchildren, or particular items of furniture. Then there were the Hispanic families, coming with one roll of carefully counted bills, choosing slowly between items, and telling their children in Spanish “no, not that, not today”. I threw in extra discounts for them, and I wanted to say “I’m more like you than you know; I don’t belong here either”, but of course I didn’t.

The garage sale was cathartic. It was good to clear out old toys and unused stuff. We thought we’d had a thorough sort-out only 3 years ago, when we moved to America, but it’s amazing how much we'd brought with us, and how much more we’d grown out of as a family in those 3 years. There was an emotional moment or two for me. In fact my very first sale was of a soft toy which I was particularly fond of. It was called a ‘glitter bug’, and was an insect of some description, with sparkly wings and boggly eyes, which giggled when you pressed its abdomen. Or maybe its thorax. Anyway… an older couple handed over their cash (grandparents, I thought), and I was musing fondly to myself how nice it was that the glitter bug would find a new home and a new purpose entertaining other small children as it had so often entertained mine, when the wife said to me “the dog will like that one - we have to go round sales to pick up toys cheaply, he gets through so many of them - he’s a terrible chewer”. Alas, poor glitter bug.

One moment I really enjoyed was when I’d got chatting to a man, and he suddenly seemed to take a mental step back from it all. Maybe he was a blogger. He gave a little laugh, and said,

“I don’t know why we all do this. It’s an odd kind of a way to spend a Saturday, isn’t it? I don’t really need anything else in my house. I’ve got too much stuffed in there as it is. Look, I’ve bought these from the sale next door, but I don’t really want them, do I?”

I looked at the set of three wooden bowls, nesting one inside the other.

“Well, you bought them because you liked them” I said, encouragingly. “And they’re nice, I think.”

“Here, you have one, then”, he said, handing me the smallest of the three. I protested that they were a set, and that, really, they were his, but he insisted. So I acquired a pretty little wooden bowl, and shared a moment of ironic self-critique with a stranger. Lovely.

Oh, and I have to tell you about my favourite triumph of the day. We had been given, at some point, various items of bedding that a friend didn’t want. It was brand new and in its packaging. Now, American bedding is a real mystery, as many an English expat here will testify. Not only are the words different (comforters, shams, European shams), but the sizes are different, and indeed the whole concept is different. I still haven’t really worked it out. So I hadn’t looked very carefully at the Ralph Lauren white and gold item, because I assumed it would be some alien article, which wouldn’t fit our beds. I added it to the garage sale, and, since it was brand new and Ralph Lauren, and with the original price tag still visible, I deviated from my pricing policy, and put quite a high price on it. There hadn’t been much interest in it, but then towards the end of the day, a woman decided she liked it. She tried to negotiate the price down, and I was going to agree, but she made the mistake of asking if she could open the packet. She got the thing out, and lo and behold, it was a duvet cover. A common or garden duvet cover. Moreover it looked about right for a king size duvet, AND it was extremely nice – lovely quality cotton and an elegant pattern. So I threw my newfound sales skills into reverse, gears crunching, dug in, and stuck to the original price. For a few horrible moments, I thought the potential purchaser was going to cave in and say “oh, ok then”, and buy the thing. By now, I was really really keen on it, but acting casual, and, phew, she was distracted by her sister who was loading our old office chair (priced at $15, sold for $5) into the car.

All in all, the sale was a big success. Husband and I idled the day away, chatting to customers and enjoying the sunshine. We made about $200, acquired a reindeer, a small wooden bowl, and (effectively) a Ralph Lauren duvet cover. It was hard work, but therapeutic too. We were left with only three small cardboard boxes of stuff, and I felt the house had been purged.

It occurs to me that holding a garage sale is, in some respects, like blogging. You rummage through your personal things, and put a selection out on display for complete strangers to come and nose through, and – amazingly – they find value in some of them.

.

The Garage Sale: Part l

Now the weather is warming up, as you drive around, you see small rectangular signs sprouting up in the grass alongside the roadway. They’ve lain dormant all winter, but the arrival of spring brings them out, and they’ll flourish in steady number right through until autumn becomes winter. The size, colour and composition of the signs vary, but the species can be recognized by one common factor: they all have the word ‘SALE’ clearly visible. It’s garage sale season again.

It is said that Britain is a nation of shop-keepers (I never understood why), but truly America is a nation that loves to buy and sell. I suppose the nearest equivalent to the garage sale in Britain would be the car boot sale, and that’s the perfect illustration of how much less comfortable British people are with the boundaries of their homes being crossed. An Englishman’s home is indeed his castle (so we’re a nation of shop-keepers in castles?), and if we want to sell our stuff, we take it to a disused airfield or similar large open space, and put it on display on tables. Sitting in our fold-away chairs alongside lots of other people doing the same thing, we enjoy anonymity and safety in numbers. Not so the Americans. They’re quite happy to sit on their own front driveway, with strangers picking over their goods and chattels, or in their garage if the weather is bad, or even to hold the sale inside their house.

There are three levels of domestic sale (as far as I’ve been able to work out). The first is the yard sale, which really might be just a table of goods, with a hopeful child sitting behind it, aspiring to make a few cents from their cast-off toys and their mother’s unloved crockery. Then there’s the garage sale, which is the same sort of idea, but on a bigger scale. There will be a few tables of bits and pieces, and probably some pieces of furniture and larger items. Of course what has happened is that nobody wants to say they’re having a yard sale, at least not on the sign, because it sounds less worth a visit than a garage sale, so now everything in these two categories is a garage sale. (It’s the same principle behind retailers only ever selling food or drink in the sizes regular, large, or absolutely blooming enormous, because who wants to buy a small?) The original distinction has been lost, though people do still talk of ‘yard sales’.

Then, further up the sale scale, there’s the estate sale. The estate sale happens when a house is being emptied out, after a death, or a downsizing, perhaps. If you see a sign to an estate sale, you’re talking big items: furniture, electrical goods, household items, and so forth, with probably a large amount of smaller stuff in there as well. An estate sale will always involve going inside the house, so it’s a good opportunity for snooping neighbours as well as bargain hunters.

You never know what you’re going to see at a garage sale. It really is the case that people put out everything and anything. Typically there are clothes, crockery, glass-ware, vases, toys, games, Christmas or Hallowe’en decorations, chairs, tables, lamps, suitcases, rugs, books, garden tools. You name it. At one estate sale, I saw an old printing press for sale, and a pair of leather lederhosen. The range of the quality is as varied as the range of the items themselves. Some of the stuff is brand new, in unopened packaging. Some of it is chipped or bent or dirty, and frankly you can’t imagine why anyone would want it for free, let alone pay money for it. I’m not exaggerating when I say that at one sale (the printing press and lederhosen one, actually), the bathroom cupboard was open, and there were half-used packets of cotton buds for sale, and pots of face cream (I’m assuming unused, though they weren’t sealed – I didn’t investigate too closely).

This being America, if there is buying and selling going on, there is room for a middleman. So there are small local businesses who will run your estate sale for you, and these build up certain reputations. Round here, if you see the pink sign for an 'Estate Sale by Helen', I’m told it means that you can rely on the items there being high-end and good quality – but pricey. Others have more of a reputation as being good for a bargain. I’ve heard, though, that it’s a mixed blessing getting one of these businesses in. Yes, it saves you the hassle of running your own sale, but they retain the right to bring unsold goods from other sales into your sale. So your house becomes the showroom for other people’s wares. Though I suppose it’s swings and roundabouts, because your stuff in turn might be taken to do the rounds elsewhere.

Garage sales always seem well-attended. There’s always a line of cars parked outside the house, and a steady trickle of people heading in or out. At week-ends, a garage sale will typically open at 8.00am, but on week-days, I’m told they open up at 7.00 or even 6.30. The good stuff goes early, they say, but of course it depends what you’re looking for. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure… Or meat... Or poison.

I haven’t been to many sales. Occasionally, I’ve stopped at one in the neighbourhood, and given the kids a dollar to spend on a toy for fun. I once saw a glider (swing seat) as I drove by a sale, and stopped to buy it – something of a bargain at $20, though it did need some attention. I’ve walked round a few just because I was initially rather intrigued by the phenomenon, and wanted to see what they were like. I also wanted to pick up some tips and get the confidence to run our own garage sale, which we did last year on 31st October, Hallowe’en, and which I’ll tell you about in the next post.