Hello and happy spring to all! After an extremely long, harsh winter it is starting to inch into the 60's here in northern Illinois. I can not ever remember still having the heat on in the third week of May before! Hopefully where ever you are, you are warm!
Two weeks ago as some of you know, I had a mega yard sale. After planning for a week to set it all up and then two days of actual sale time, I am happy to report we made $500! And surprisingly I never had to use my change. Nearly every shopper the first day had exact amounts of money. What luck!
To all the nay- sayers who complained that a yard sale is too much work, you should really rethink that; I think it was well worth it. Especially since not only did we make money but we cleaned out a LOT of stuff. I estimate that we sold 2/3 of what we put out!
And to all those people who will say;
"I don't have anything to sell."
Think again. I had twice as much to sell than I thought when I started perusing our "stuff." You just need to be objective and brutal. If you haven't used something in 4 seasons it is time to try and sell it. Men, if you haven't used a tool or power item in a year sell it! We sold every tool we put out and all of them sold at very good prices. No one even haggled on most of the tools! Which made the 2 haggles worth it!
Plus having a sale right NOW is the best time. The stimulus checks are still coming out and at least three people mentioned that at our sale. A lot of people are thinking of the stimulus checks as disposable money. So why not let them spend it at your sale!
Tips for your sale:
Get help. 1 person is nice, 4 is better.
Put an ad in your local advertiser or paper. I asked people who came to our sale if they saw my ad and ¾ of the people did! (if you don't want early birds say so, some guy showed up on our porch the night before!)
Give excellent directions in your ad. No vagueness allowed.
Put up BIG sale signs at every road that leads to your home and make sure not to forget any turns. Put the minimum on the signs. SALE, TIME and DATE is enough. Use red marker and make it triple thick and bold. Use metal or heavy wood stakes to secure your signs the night before the sale. Then have someone check your signs in the morning. Someone stole ours the second night and moved them to their sale! GRRRRR! So make extras just in case!
Have change:
2-$20
5-$10
10-$5
30-$1
1 roll of quarters.
The first day of your sale will be the most fruitful. So price your items a little higher than you want. The second day price lower and haggle.
Wake up 4 hours before the sale. You will still have to rush trust me. Have a good breakfast! Have sandwich stuff and drinks on hand for lunch.
Let the kids sell lemonade or in our case we could have sold hot cocoa! (it was chilly but sunny)
Never leave your sale unattended and lock your house. Never let anyone in your house and don't leave your kids alone with the sale. (I went to a yard sale once and there was a 5 year old girl manning the sale! Her mother came out as I was leaving 10 minutes later!)
Keep your money on you at all times. Use a fanny pack.
Mandi G, Money correspondent for gather.com
Mandi lives in northern IL with her husband and daughter.
She looks forward to fishing for the first time this year, this weekend!
Go Cubs!
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Comments: 76
Great article Mandi~
1.) Forget the newspaper ad. It was a waste of money and did not drive any traffic to the sale. Maybe its something peculiar to the area I was in.
2.) I had lots of change, and needed almost none of it. I needed the quarters and about 4 fives and 10 singles.
3.)No matter how low stuff is priced, people will still steal things.
Rob, you did quite well being a one man show!!
Rob, way to go!!!!
I do have a lot of stuff we need to get rid of.
I tend to freecycle and not make any money just to get rid of stuff.
JoAnne, thanks for thanking me for the email ;-)
it is very hard to email now...I fear readership on gather will drop drastically.
Sure it's work, but the $$$ is great! Especially in this economy, where people are trying to save money.
:)
And I agree with Sarina. I wouldn't have known about this without your email.
Put YOUR HOUSE NUMBER on the sign. That pretty much makes it useless to anyone else having a sale. It won't stop pranksters, but you'll have a better chance of keeping your sign in place. We used the same signs for several years.
Tamara, I would post signs a week in advance at your local market, PO, doctor's office, drug store, convient store, etc. Anywhere that you can. Also if you have a local advertiser like we do, put an ad in. The hard core yard salers in our area always read the advertiser sale ads.
Around here there are so many Mexican people that come to the sales and they say they have no money so they haggle you down to a dollar or two on most items of which isn't even worth my time. I'd just as soon give it all away to Goodwill then have to go through all of the work and hassle to make a dollar here and a dollar there for 200 dollar dresses or dishes or glasswear that are crystal. It just isn't worth it around here. No matter what part of town that you live in "they" invade and practically want everything for free so rather than go through all of the trouble and not sell anything you give it to them for a buck or give it to them period just to get rid of the stuff.
Please go ahead and email me any time.
Maybe we should have ANOTHER yard sale. We have so much STUFF - we last moved several years ago. And we still have all those neat Polish things my hubby sells on Ebay.
Good tips.
And about emailing us hey if I didnt want your emails I wouldnt have joined up.... : ) ; )
Or I d just block them... So keep them coming.
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thanks
everyone!
Marilyn
Those yard sales really do pay off!
Blessings ~
Rene
I'm glad you made money, though, and you wrote an excellent article!
I just wanted to stop by since I am finally going through what is now listed as under 4,800 pieces of gather new mail that is sitting in my inbox on here.
With that mentioned I just came across either a mailing from you yourself, or someone else brought this piece to my attention. You or they felt that your creation should be shared with the gather community, which I am very glad that it was passed on to me to view. So I wanted to say Thank you for taking the time out of your busy day to publish it here on gather for us to all view. :o)
As well before I leave you I wanted to wish you a Happy New Year... in 2009 :o)