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Experienced garage sale ladies please come in
We're having a garage sale this weekend. I've never done one and I've only ever been to garage sales a few times years ago. Can y'all give me some words of experience on a few things?
The stuff we'll be selling are random house decor items, a few large pieces of furniture (dining set, futon), lots of baby toys, some teen-ish and missy clothing (from my slutty clubbing days...) and some of DH's out of date dress shirts, a suit, etc. I've also got some costume jewelery I just don't wear anymore. I imagine garage sale shoppers want a really really good steal, so here's my general pricing stragegy:
Costume jewelery and clothing - $.50-$5 depending on the item's quality and whether it was a designer item or something
Furniture - $25-$75
Kid's toys - $1-$3
Home decor - $1-$10 depending on size of item or function (as in, I wouldn't sell someone a nice giant framed painting for $1, but I also wouldn't ask $10 for a vase or something small like that.
Is my reasoning here and my strategy sensible? What kinds of things in your experience has sold well at garage sales and what hasn't?
TIA!
This discussion has been closed.
Re: Experienced garage sale ladies please come in
We priced everything low along the ranges you gave and we still bargained with people. We do garage sales to get rid of stuff, we're not necessarily in it for a return on our investments, kwim?
My experiences: kids clothes sell well but we hardly sell any of our own clothes. People love garage type stuff - we even sold a broken lawnmower as is. Toys, outdoor stuff and kitchen items have always sold. We sold all our old cds, dvds and video games. People have ignored the books but they bought every single one of DHs old baseball hats.
Tips: Have a lot of change on you. Last year, I had $40 in singles and it wasn't enough. This year, I had $60 in singles, $20 in tens and another $20 in fives. A roll of quarters. Whoever is better at quick math should hold the money. I may have a finance degree but DH keeps the cash
People will try to hustle you! Be prepared and stay good-humored about it.
Good luck!
This
I usually try to have $40 in singles before the sale starts.
Make sure everything you can is priced.
Be willing to haggle.
Open early - like 6:30. You'll get a lot of traffic before 8am.
Something I always keep in mind is the later it gets, the hotter it gets. And whatever I have left over, I'm going to have to pack up and drag to Goodwill in the heat, and for no money. So I usually accept any reasonable price (the exception being big items I know I can sell on Craigslist for a decent price).
Make sure you list on Craigslist the night before.
Make sure your signs have huge easy to see arrows. Arrows are the most important part.
Also, at the end of our last garage sale, I put up a Craigslist add that everything left was "FREE" ... Which turned out to be very rewarding. I didn't have to take anything to Goodwill. Also the couple that showed up had a little girl with them and they told her she could pick whatever toys she wanted and the smile on her face was priceless.
Ditto! So you should come to the clothing swap GTG Friday and see what you can unload there!
It's never the nice stuff that sells at a garage sale, it's always the junky stuff.
Haha, actually it's the junky stuff that I want to get rid of! I'd rather make $1 on an item and not have to take it to goodwill, ya know?
we kind of avoided this by not putting signs out until we were ready. like I said in my previous comment, I didn't list an address on any of the online ads I posted, I just mentioned cross-streets. while I was getting ready to put stuff out, MH was driving around putting up the signs. we had a few people come before we were totally ready but it wasn't a huge deal.