Our annual neighborhood garage sale was held this past weekend. During last year’s sale I offered ten garage sale tips:
- A group sale is better then selling alone. More stuff draws more traffic.
- Be prepared. Be ready to go the night before so that you don’t have to rush around in the morning.
- Plan your sale layout with customers in mind. Use marketing tricks to make your customers more likely to purchase your stuff!
- Price things carefully.
- Label things well.
- Be friendly. Greet people as they arrive — chat if they’re chatty.
- Do not bad-mouth your items.
- Be willing to bargain, but be less flexible at the start.
- Keep a ledger. Jot down a description of each item and how much you sold it for.
- Do not use a cash box. Keep your money on you at all times.
Here are ten new tips, with a focus on prepping for the day of the sale:
- Be clear on the purpose of your sale. Are you selling things to make money or to get rid of them? This question affects everything you do, from how you price things to how willing you are be to negotiate. Surprisingly, you can often make more money (and get rid of more junk) by pricing things low.
(If your goal is to get top dollar, you should really be selling on eBay or Craigslist.) - Advertise. Stick an ad in the newspaper. Put up a notice on Craigslist. Post simple, effective signs around the neighborhood. It’s best to use big bold text like “HUGE SALE” with an arrow pointing the right direction. Make sure your sign is readable. (The Yard Sale Queen has a great page highlighting the difference between good and bad yard sale signs. I think the one I’ve posted here is just about perfect. I could write an entire article on proper garage sale signage — I feel strongly about it. )
- Get cash. Get a roll of quarters, a stack of twenty-five $1 bills, and a few $5 bills. Do this two days before the sale, so that if you forget, you can still get the change on the day before.
- Prepare your staging area. People will be more inclined to stop if you set up shop in your yard or driveway. Some people are reluctant to enter a dark and dreary garage. Make your sale inviting and easy to browse. You can lure customers by placing highly-desirable items near the road.
- Go over ground rules. Make sure that everybody working the sale is in agreement. Be clear on your bargaining policy. (You don’t want your wife to be angry when you sell her rabbit-shaped jewelry box for $2 when she wanted at least $5 for it.) Make sure that everyone understands the importance of never parting from the money. Agree that nobody will bad-mouth the merchandise.
- Think like a customer. As soon as you’ve opened and fielded the initial flood of shoppers, walk through your sale as if you were there to buy something. How does it feel? Are things clearly marked? Is it easy to move around? Are your books on the ground in boxes? Or are they placed neatly on shelves or tables? Would you pay $10 for that porcelain cat?
- Display items to their advantage. This weekend, Kris noticed that a couple of nice lawn chairs weren’t selling. They were folded up and leaning against the wall of the garage, so she unfolded them and set them on the lawn. They sold within ten minutes. In the past, I’ve had trouble selling books. This year I carried a pair of bookshelves out to the garage. It took more work, but I sold over $100 of books, books that to me were simply junk. (Powell’s had refused to buy them back on multiple occasions.)
- Play background music. I find it a little uncomfortable to visit a garage sale (or to host one) when there’s complete silence in the yard or driveway. But don’t play offensive music either — play something appropriate for your audience. For the past couple years, I’ve made a point of playing The Essential Johnny Cash over and over and over again. Sure, I’m sick of it by the end of the weekend, but the customers love it.
- Promote expensive items. Big-ticket items can be tough to sell, but you can do it with a little extra effort. For example, I have a digital camera I wanted to sell. I gathered all the bits and pieces and placed them together on a table along with a printout of the Amazon page for the camera. If I’d thought to do this on Thursday or Friday, the camera might have sold. I didn’t get it out til Saturday morning, though, so I’m still stuck with it!
- Make it easy for shoppers to test electronic items. If you’re selling electrical items, make sure you have an extension cord handy so that people can test them. No smart person is going to just take your word that your television “works great”. They’re going to want to see it in operation. Also, have some batteries on hand so that a prospective buyer can test that old Nintendo Gameboy for himself.
Running a yard sale is not rocket science. But if you put a little effort into creating an environment where it is pleasant to browse and easy to find junk treasures, you’ll make a lot more money.
Our sale this year was less profitable than in past years, but it wasn’t because of lousy preparations on our part. The first two days went quite well. We sold $464 of stuff, of which $290 was mine. But on Saturday, the rain set in. Plus we were competing with Portland’s Grand Floral Parade. We made $11.25 before we closed up shop at 2 p.m. Pitiful!
For more garage sale tips, check out the Yard Sale Queen.
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good looking garage sale. Was that the before or after picture?
Any suggestions for garage selling when you don’t own a garage? I don’t own one and and relegated to selling things on eBay.
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Why don’t you try Yardmama. It’s really great and you can post all year long, without having a yard or garage for only $34 / yr.
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I wish all the junk left after yard sales would just disappear. For me, that is by far the worst part. You have all this junk that you have emotionally departed with, but then it is still there!
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We have an entire webpage that discusses how to get rid of stuff after your garage sale. You can also make money on the leftovers, if you do it right.
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Three suggestions:
1) everyone loves free stuff. You could put out free lemonade/ice tea, cookies or whatever, to promote a festive feel. And you could have a pile of complementary items and buyers can pick one item to go with each purchase. It could be any old junk, but people will love getting a freebie.
2) have bags and or boxes available for people to haul away their purchases.
3)around here people post on the local freecycle (www.freecycle.org) that after a certain time, say 4 PM, whatever is left is free for the taking, and include their address. If you’re lucky, instead of you needing to figure out what to do with all the unsold stuff which you’ve already designated you don’t want anymore, people will schlepp it away for you!
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How To: Have A Yard Sale…
We love yard/garage/stoop sales. Recently we got a cute teapot for $3! Yay! If you’d like to please us by selling us your cute teapots, you’ll need to throw a yard sale. Get Rich Slowly has put together a bunch……
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[...] A timely post was published today over at Get Rich Slowly – check out this yard sale checklist. [...]
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That sign’s not so great because it doesn’t include the date of the sale. Often I don’t even bother checking out a yard sale if the sign doesn’t have the date on it, because so many people fail to take a sign down after the sale. I don’t want to hunt for a yard sale that turns out to have ended two weeks ago.
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I am a longtime fan of the Yard Sale Queen site. The message boards there are very busy..with tons of tips on hosting and going to yardsales, thrift shops and also reselling on ebay.
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I would argue that you need to stick firm to your prices. I would be extremely annoyed if someone came up with something tagged $5 and offered me $4.50. Come on. Give me the 50 cents.
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A few things…
I personally find it easier and more profitable to not price each item. I keep a rough idea in my head as to how much I’d like to get it return, but generally I don’t want the hassle of having to deal with the left-overs, so I want everything to sell. If something is priced too high people will often just walk away. Talk to the customers if they are chatty and try to sell the items… ask what they are willing to pay and negotiate on everything. They will feel like they are getting a deal, and you’ll often find people willing to pay more than you would have marked it.
As for signs, include a date/time since many people do not take down their signs at the end of their sales. It can get frustrating following signs for a sale that was last weekend. Also, whatever time you put (I recommend no later than 8am) be setup and an hour before (in this case 7am). The serious shoppers will show up early and are often willing to pay a little more for a harder to find item. Later in the day, especially the last day, people will often be looking for great deals and not often specific items… sell cheap to finish things off… you can bring in more than you’d expect…
Place signs at nearby major intersections and at each turn along the way. The more people you can funnel to you sale the better!
Give away free lemonade… i spent $15 on a few gallons of Chick-Fil-A’s fresh squeezed and it was a hit! People linger longer and are more likely to buy….
At my last sale my wife and I made $600 in one Saturday from 7:30am to 2:30pm…
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I would argue that you need to stick firm to your prices.
Kevin, Kevin, Kevin. Have you been to many yard sales, either as a buyer or seller? Around Portland, anyhow, the haggling is part of the game. I suspect that many people go out to sales just to haggle.
In the case of a $5 item, a person isn’t likely to offer $4.50. They’re going to offer $2 or $3. Again, it depends on what your goal is with the sale. If your intentions are to make money, then you might be less willing to negotiate. But if you’re just trying to get rid of crap, you’ll take any offer at all.
By the way, won’t somebody please take my encyclopedia set. (Actually, I should give it to my cousin. He believes the wikipedia is an abomination.)
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You may have to give them away. A sweet friend of mine, a retired school teacher, tried to donate a set to the local libraries, to schools and even Second Hand Books didn’t want them and they went into the recycle bin. So sad. Maybe in 50 more years they will be a priceless momento of an age when people read and used Encyclopedias for research.
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Great article — good comments. Check out http://www.yardsalequeen.com website for the low-down on making your sale a success. the author quotes some of her tips too. great web page. ref having a ys w/o a yard or garage — rent a table at a church/school flea market!
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I think this is a great list, we are doing on in a few weeks and I am going to try to follow this list.
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I like this article, but what about some tips for those of us who like to shop at garage sales? Any advice on what to look for and what to avoid?
Gal
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Gal, check out how to find garage sale gold, one of the earliest articles I ever posted. It’s been a long time since I wrote about how to shop at yard sales, though — I’ll have to write something new.
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I garage sale a lot during the summer – these are my suggestions:
1) Avoid bottlenecks – give people room to shop. If you have a table at which you collect $, move it away so that people can still move even if there’s a line to pay.
2)Avoid addresses and dates that clog up your signs. People can’t read these on the fly anyhow. In our town, you will get ticketed if you leave your signs up and they can track you down. Also, most people use the paper or craigslist to list of where they’re going and don’t depend on the signs other than for simple direction.
3)Price your stuff! I hate to go to a garage sale where nothing is priced and they ask, “What do you think it’s worth?” I’m not there to pay what it’s worth, I’m there to get a bargain.
4)Be willing to bargain – if you love it enough to argue over a dollar or two, why are you selling it? It’s a yard sale. Take the 3 bucks!
5)Don’t be too chatty. People don’t want to know the history of every item they touch.
6)Have plenty of change on hand – I can’t believe how many people don’t have change.
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Glad you referred to the yardsalequeen site. It has everything you’ll ever need to know about having a yard sale and going to yard sales. A terrific resource and lots of fun.
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If only I’d gotten a picture, I’d have the ultimate submission to add to yardsalequeen’s bad sign hall of shame … I’m sure the accuracy was unintentional on the part of the sale promoter who put up the ‘Garbage Sale’ sign.
Really.
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I just wanted to let everyone know that I post on the message boards at Yard Sale Queen almost every day. The people on the site are full of knowledge and friendly too!
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A couple other tips from a lifelong garage-saler:
1) If you want to make money, be aware of the over-bargainer – she’s the person who negitiates down on every item as she picks it up, then hands you a handful of stuff at the end. You potentially end up losing out on multiple dollars. If you see this starting to take shape, you might want to ask him/her to wait until she’s done shopping and you’ll work with her on the overall price.
2) For all that change you’ve got afterward: my bank has a machine that counts all the change for you (unrolled!) and pops out a receipt, which you then take to the nearest teller, who deposits it into your account – no commission taken. Some grocery stores have these machines, but they’ll cost you money.
3) If you know you’ll need every last moment in the morning to get your sale ready, warn in your ads that “early birds pay double”. Otherwise, you’ll be stuck fumbling for change and entertaining these folks, rather than readying your items.
4) Get your kids in on it. They can sell old toys, lemonade, cookies or other goodies. Good way to teach them about money.
5) DEFINITELY have a junk table with all sorts of crap labeled 5 cents. I never thought this would work, but my husband insisted. That’s where ALL the kids headed first, and inevitably, they bought some worthless (to us) trinket to keep them busy.
6) If you have a fun pet, by all means, bring it out. We brought our cockatiel’s cage outside, and many customers stopped just to see him, and many left after buying something!
7) Again, admit to yourself that your main goal is really to get rid of your crap. The money is nice, but do you really want to have to load it up and haul it away on Monday? Don’t be offended by people who want to negotiate. If you see someone looking hard at something, and you have a feeling you’ll be left with it at the end of the day, start chatting with them about it and ask if they’d like to negotiate. By the end of the sale, we’ve learned it’s best to practically give things away rather than face the prospect of having to deal with it later.
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[...] A Yard Sale Checklist: Ten Tips For Garage Sale Prep We’re strongly considering having one of these, mostly to see if we can get any value out of some items before they hit the Dumpster. (@ get rich slowly) [...]
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Wow! What perfect timing. We are planning a garage sale for next weekend (due to a rainy forcast for this weekend). We’re putting out some stuff that didn’t sell in last years sale but we’ll definitely be keeping these tips in mind!
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[...] (www.getrichslowly.org) – GetRichSlowly just published a checklist for the perfect yardsale. It looks like the perfect way [...]
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Make sure that when you’re all done with your sale, you look into donating your items. You can get really good tax breaks from donations. (And if you really don’t feel like having a yard sale, you can actually make more money by donating than by having a garage sale in some circumstances … I have an article about it on my blog – sorry for the plug!)
I agree with putting a date on your sign, it helps people know.
For me the best yard sale sign has Yard sale at the top in big enough to read but not huge letters since everyone knows what the sign they are looking at is about. Then you have the date and time in LARGE letters, the address in just smaller letters, and a HUGE arrow pointing the right direction (and enough signs that someone can get there without knowing the address … often you’re going through a neighborhood you don’t know.)
If you have too much info on a sign, or “Garage Sale” takes up 99% of the room, people aren’t going to know how to find you.
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[...] for having a family garage sale. Mommy savers has some great Garage Sale Tips. And there is a great Yard Sale Checklist at Get Rich Slowly that I love. There is even more great tips over at YardSaleQueen. I know that [...]
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Weekly Roundup – 06/15/07…
Well, here we are… In a few days we’ll be taking off for vacation, so we’ve been madly rushing around trying to tie up loose ends in advance of our departure. If you’re interested in contributing a guest post, please let me know…
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wow! what a timely post! after reading about the benefits of yard sales i was very excited to participate in the neighborhood yard sale yesterday. ours was not nearly as productive.
we lost money. and didn’t get rid of much stuff either. seemed to have a lot of people looking for the .10 item they could re-sell on ebay for $100. i worried about being overpriced, but i was offered .50 (and accepted as it was getting late in the day) for 5 books and 2 kitchen tools (1.45 by my pricing). it cost $5 to participate in the sale (covered advertising, balloons, signage), $8 for stickers to price things, and $12 for lunch. i lost $7 and 2 days.
my neighbors didn’t fair any better. the church rummage sales will have a lot of supplies and the salvation army will be busy this week.
i won’t participate next year – i’ll save my time and money (and take the tax break) and donate the small items. i’ll try ebay and craig’s list for a couple of the bigger items, but i won’t do a yard sale again.
i wonder if it’s location? (i live in a town mostly supported by a large tech company – are we more computer-geeky and likely to use craig’s list and ebay? are we more likely to donate smaller items to charity?)
-s
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Garage Sale tip: When the kids were smaller they collected the free toys in their burger meals. When they got older we cleared out the toys by putting ten in a ziplock bag and selling the bag for 50 cents. It’s amazing how many of these trinkets were in the bottom of the kids’ toy box. Our bags brought in $20! Hint: Don’t let the customers’ kids open the bags and mix and match. You’ll sell more.
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Good tips!! I’m hosting a contest on my blog right now and the prize is an autographed copy of Garage Sale America by Bruce Littlefield, plus one of his garage sale treasures. Stop on by and enter if you’d like.
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Does anyone out there ever try to have a “swap meet” as opposed to a yardsale, for say maybe children’s clothing and such. I had the crazy idea that if I can host a swap meet at my church or school or even in my drive way, the kids could play in the backyard while the parents exchange childrens clothes and such. It would be a win win situation all the way around for everyone involved. If I did it at home I don’t have to drag my daughter anywhere, there is no money exchange, just decent clothes, toys, ect. This cuts out time and money waisted at stores and the kids can try the clothes on right there at home or where ever. Doing that maybe once a month or so is even better that way if the clothes don’t fit you can switch up with someone else. Maybe put an add in the church bullitin or local paper. I’d like to hear feedback.
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To feed my Garage Sale fix I built http://www.garagesalenation.com, it maps out all the sales in the country. Last weekend I had over 24,000 sales mapped on it.
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Natalie, great resource! One thing I was thinking of doing with some cuddly toys (and that sort of stuff) that doesn’t sell but is in good condition is to start a community toy library in the local play group. Kids can borrow toys and take them home for a week or two and then exchange then for something else. That way you get rid of toys that just won’t sell and the community benefits too!
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[...] being the caring person that I am, I will leave you with a link that I found extremely helpful during my planning stages of the yard sale. Hope everyone has a great weekend, and I will try to get around to say “hi” in a [...]
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To find or post garage sales by map, try http://www.mapgaragesales.com. The advantage to this one is that it’s free to post.
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As pointed out, advertising is an obvious necessity. http://www.yardsalequeen.com/yardsalelinks.htm has some good sites. Some of you may have noticed http://www.yardsalead.com coming up in your searches. So far I have to say the site seems more professional than others that I have been to. Like the others it does not cost to post, but it gives search options to fine tune what you are looking for.
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About your books….
You said you sold 100 dollars worth of books.
How did you price your books?
50 cents? 1 dollar?
Books always throw me. I never know how to price them.
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[...] reading garage sale tips from places like the Yard Sale Queen and Get Rich Slowly (click here and here). Here are some of the tips that I used, along with how well they worked for me: Have a Group Sale [...]
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I’ve had lots of good experiences with yard sales over the years. I’ve noticed that a “carnival” attitude has helped. This time I had downloaded circus music, had “used car lot flag strings” and I played the “barker” who made it a side show. As time goes on, I see what isn’t moving and so I barter with people who are buying something. I either give them something for free for buying the item, or, I discount the price if they take something else at half price. Less to put back of the shelves after the sale is over. I also go upscale on signage. I go to the local print shop and have LARGE signs made up that are generic, but have space to hang regular paper sized signs on the posters. The smaller signs have times, dates, directional arrows. When done, throw away the small paper signs, but protect the poster sized signs with clear plastic shelving paper with adheasive backing. Use them again or rent them to your neighbors when they have a sale.
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I was thinking of having a garage sale and saling everything for $1 ea. Do you think this will work. I don’t want to negotiate, in my opinion $1 for each item is a steal. In need of feedback
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someone asked about getting rid of the stuff after… My plans were to not bring anything back in the house, and what I did last time worked great. about 12:00 Saturday I put an add on freecycle (you do have to sign up to post). it said something like. Garage sale leftovers, must call me xxx.xxx.xxxx must bring truck or van to take all. will be ready around 2:30.
I had several people reply to the email (I guess they can’t read). The first guy said he’d have to borrow a truck, but wanted it. I told the other 3 that called I’d keep their # and they were next if that guy didn’t show.
After we had his dad’s van loaded (I had a bunch of stuff left), I asked him if he did yard sales? He said he had been laid off at the car plant, and was doing whatever he could to support his family. So it worked out good for both of us.
craigslist free section would work just as well.
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I’ve found Yard Sale Search.com to be the most comprehensive source of listings – and it has the best data. The thing that irks me about craigslist and all the sites that just replicate those listings (gsalr, garagesalestracker, etc.) are the bad data. Bad dates, bad addresses, it just seems like a free for all.
I’ll end my rant.
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[...] Get Rich Slowly: 10 Tips for Garage Sale Prep [...]
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This is awesome. I am planning to do my first yard sale this spring and these tips will be very helpful. I am still trying to figure out how to do it. I have a long, single car driveway so I think I will need to do it at the end of the driveway near the road.
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I recently posted on my blog, how you can make use of garage sale to impart valuable lessons on your kids. A garage sale offer so much to them in terms of teachings about money matters. If interested do read my post here
http://onecentatatime.com/let-children-learn-money-from-garage-sale/
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My husband was just offered a job today, out of state. It will require that we live in an extended stay hotel for about a month. We would like to have a moving sale, selling large furniture, etc. before we move to cut down on moving/storage costs. We have to be in the new location by Sept. 1. Any suggestions for getting this done quickly and for selling furniture well? My biggest question is how to price the items? I’d like to sell some of my clothes too, but from what I’ve read, that may be a bad idea. Is there a better way to sell women’s and men’s clothing?
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I am planning a garage sale to have in a couple months. We do not have a paved driveway, just rocks. We also have a parking area in the back of the house, which is also rocks. You get to it by an entrance off of the road and ours is the first back area on the entrance. Would it be better to hold the sale back there or in front? Either way, people would either have to park by the curb or in the businesses on either side..which are both very short distance from each area. Thank you for any input.
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Good tips! I know this is an older post but I wanted to comment to the people having Garage Sales: Please stop using Ebay to price stuff! Just because someone sold a My Little Pony on Ebay for 40.00 once doesn’t mean it is worth that at your YARD SALE. Come on people.
I do buy at garage sales to sell on Ebay, and you know what? That is good business. If you want Ebay prices then pay and take the time to create an Ebay store, but don’t get mad about “pickers” and overprice all your stuff.
My advice quit trying to sell your used crap based on what price Ebay pulled up on your iphone. It’s greedy.
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As the source for this article – I gotta definitely agree with #47 No one likes seeing printouts of what similar things sold for on ebay.
#45 – I would pick the area where it would be seen by people driving by. If your yardsale is hidden in the backyard – that could turn some people off or they may not bother to stop.
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I had a garage sell and I only made 5 dollars!!! Because we had 2 neighbors having a yard sell as well!
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Interesting. I’m curious to see the success rate of sales at a garage/yard sale due to yard signs.
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If PCS’ing or selling close to a military base or on base you can always try MilitaryOlineSales.com
It’s free to list and unlike bookoo you wont have to break your bank account to post a picture classified!
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