garage sales

I am seriously thinking about having a garage sale at my mom's house and get rid of some of the stuff in here. I have never hosted one before ... so looking for some advice on what sells, how to advertise, how to price stuff, etc.

Thanks!!

I haven't had one myself, either. But do you know when your town/city is having it's town wide sale? That would make it easy to get it out without having to advertise since people would be out looking for garage sales already. Pricing depends on your area and what sort of stuff you're selling - nicer or nearly new stuff can be priced higher. I live in a rural area, so items tend to be marked fairly low.

I plan to go to my town's town wide tomorrow morning and Saturday. My BIL has worked his way through a little over half of my glasses and I'm not going to go spend a lot on a new set just for him to break again. Plus, MIL's crock pots just died so I plan to hunt for a couple decent ones for her. (and look for the usual books, old toys/games, etc)
I don't know about anyone else, but that tends to be the sort of things people I know buy - dishes, cookware, good tupperware, furniture, nice brands of clothing/sometimes childrens or baby clothes, bedding, and so on.


Good luck with yours. I'll ask my MIL for any tips and try to post back here in a little bit.

Growing up my mom did lots and lots of garage sales (typically 3-4 every year). Here are some tips that we picked up along the way.

1.) Price everything beforehand. Sometimes people won't bother with an item if they don't know how much you want for it. Even if you're only asking 25 cents for it, your customers don't know this. You can get little sticky tabs and write the price on it. But even cheaper we always just wrote the price using a sharpie on some masking tape and then cut it off the roll. Makes nice, small, cheap pricetags. And it doesn't leave a sticky residue on your item.

2.) Put up garage sale signs from a main street that gets traffic with arrows pointing the way to your house. Don't put a lot of writing on them, as drivers won't be able to read all that when they whiz by. They are looking for arrows pointing them the way and a street sign. We got so much extra traffic to our sale from passerby's seeing the sign and coming by on a whim. And the people who do hunt for garage sales will be looking for these signs. They can be made for cheap, cardboard and a sharpie, and some packing tape to tape them to a stop sign or light pole, etc. Be sure to collect them all when you're done. We usually put up 5-7 signs. Anytime you had to make a turn from the main street to get to our house we put an arrow there indicating the driver should make a turn. You can double up signs on stop signs and light poles so drivers from both ways can see your arrows.

Ours were simple and looked like this:

GARAGE SALE
------------>
Your Street

Anything more than that and it gets too small and too much for a driver to read.

3.) Don't sell your stuff out of cardboard boxes. No one wants to dig through a cardboard box full of junk for a hidden deal. We used folding card tables to show our stuff. But if you don't have any tables, we found that laying out sheets/blankets and displaying our wares on top of the blankets in the driveway or on the front grass worked out great. The customer can see what you have to offer without digging through anything.

4.)Open EARLY!!!!! Bargain hunters are early birds. Open at 7am if you can or 7:30am at the latest. Bargain shoppers will pass you by if you don't open early. There is always a huge huge rush at our garage sales from 8-9 am so we always opened early enough to setup and ensure we are ready in time for the rush. Expect to get most of your customers before 11 am. After 11 am you won't get too many people coming by.

Some other things is go to the bank and get lots of 1's and some change so you can make change for customers. Have a calculator handy too helps with people who buy lots of stuff. Also, if you save plastic grocery bags like we did, they are handy to bag customers stuff in when they buy lots.

Finally, get someone to help you! Often times you will get swamped with people wanting to buy or haggle price, and you can't do it all.

Hope this helps, good luck!

Okay, having had and gone to many sales, I agree with some of the things said, but here are my additions.

- no one around here starts at 7 am. If you put down that you are holding it 9 am - 2 pm, people will show up at 8 am even if you say "no early birds" in your ad.

- Did I mention ad? Our newspaper has a special rate for garage sale ads. These work great! Be sure to put down that it is your mother's stuff and that there is nothing for kids.

- Definitely have someone there to help you and to watch your stuff from being taken.

- Do you have bags? People like them and if there are a bunch from shopping, you can recycle them.

- Buy those round dot stickers to price things. There are even some specifically for garage sales premarked.

- Price beforehand and be prepared to bargain. Don't bargain down for anything you really want to sell at the posted price. You may feel badly afterwards.

- the signs are important - VERY - and please take them down afterwards, not like the politicians

- wear sensible shoes, sunscreen, have a chair, have a money box or shoe box even with those small bills and change, buy a bottle of wine and make sure that you have a headache remedy for later.

Good luck!

Here's something....

Figure out about how much you want for something and add about 50% to the price if it is low already. So, if someone offers, say, $2 for a $4 item, you get what you wanted. If it is a higher priced item, ask about 20% more, like $50 for a $35 item...so on and so forth...

Of course, if you get towards the end of the sale, then you really blow them out if you don't want to keep them!

The only thing I'd add to this is - you CAN put a date on the sign and put them out a few days early. That's what people do around here - if they're having the garage sale Saturday, they put the signs out on Wed or Thurs. But you don't need the address or anything but the arrow - just make sure they're all still up the day of.

GARAGE SALE
Saturday 5/X
------------->

I always put a sign out early like for a Saturday sale it goes out on a Wednesday.

If you don't want early birds, advertise that early birds will pay double.

A lot of people have sales for 2 days, Friday and Saturday. I only do Saturday because most people are off. And the hours are usually 9-3. I don't lilke fooling around with a 2 day sale...to much. I say 1 day only and that way, you seem to sell more stuff.

I use craiglist with good success... most of my customers are 7-9 am and 3-5 pm ...

I just got home from yard sales; great timing with your question.

My yard sale pet peeves are:

people who don't have their sale clearly marked. If you're having a sale, put a sign in your yard/on your house or garage/ wherever people will see it.

As someone with a bad back, I hate having to dig thru boxes on the ground. I don't mind boxes at all, it's the location that bothers me. I know someone else mentioned putting items on blankets on the lawn or driveway, but it's very hard for some folks (like me) to shop that way.

People who put dirty items out for sale and expect to get a good price. If it's an antique that needs special cleaning, ok. If it's something that's just dirty, clean it.

People who don't price things then say, "What'll you give me for it?" or "How much do you think it's worth?" Yes, I like to bargain but I'm afraid I'll insult you by making too low an offer.

Good luck with your sale; hope you sell loads and loads!

Originally Posted by butzie

- no one around here starts at 7 am. If you put down that you are holding it 9 am - 2 pm, people will show up at 8 am even if you say "no early birds" in your ad.

- Did I mention ad? Our newspaper has a special rate for garage sale ads. These work great! Be sure to put down that it is your mother's stuff and that there is nothing for kids.

Click to expand...

Hmm, guess my town must just be full of earlybirds. I'm definitely not a morning person so lucky me >.< ....

Ads are expensive in our area. Its $27.95 for a weekend newspaper garage sale ad so I didn't bother to mention it since we never put an ad in the paper. That's a good chunk of our profits going to an ad. However craigslist is free! (unless they started charging fees? been years since I used craigslist)

Garage sales around here can start at 7 am-that is when I usually started my plant sales.

My one and only garage sale was a bust last year. Had everything on tables in garage, priced, signs, craigslist advert but I wasn't selling clothes so more browsers than anything-bummer as I spent alot of time on gettting it ready.

I love going to garage sales!!!

The one and only time I was involved in an actual sale was back in the late 1970's when I lived with my brother and his wife. I remember we decided to have a garage sale and put up signs saying the sale started at Saturday 10:00 am!!!

We had people coming by our house and knocking on our door wanting to see what we had for sale as early as Friday evening. We also had people knocking on our door at 6am the day of the sale wanting to know where the stuff was!

Be prepared for people to try and bargain down the price no matter how cheap you have something priced for. I remember we had some brand new jigsaw puzzles (1000 pieces or more) that had never even been opened up and had the original prices still on them, marked for 50 cents each! People would offer 25 cents or want 3 for 50 cents. If something was marked 10 cents, they wanted it for 5 cents or even less!

There are many "professional garage salers" out there. Those are people that make the rounds to garage sales, buy things as cheaply as they possibly can, and then go and have their own sale to resell the stuff and mark up the prices. Many even resell the stuff they buy at sales on eBay.

These people make a tidy business of it with mega income. So much so to the point that our Government has made it a law that you can only have a certain number of garage sales per year before you have to apply for a license as a seller.

Originally Posted by libby74

People who put dirty items out for sale and expect to get a good price.

Click to expand...

What about dirty worn old shoes or broken dishes?



A couple of other tips - put your big stuff where it can be seen from the street. If it doesn't look like a person has more than old/outdated clothes, knickknacks, or baby toys we won't even stop to look.

If you get someone by early after something or you want more for it. Take an offer and their number. Call back later if you can't move it at a better price.

As for "early birds" being those out at 7am... Are you people crazy? Most garage sales start at 7-8am and anything decent is gone by 10am unless the people are asking too much for everything. You get out early or you miss out.
Not everyone wants to haggle. If it's crowded, you're busy with other customers, or they're wanting to move in and out quickly they're not going to bother haggling the price over something simple - if you're going to mark things up try 20-30% otherwise they'll just think "this person wants to much for their junk". Ran into several of those myself today.
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We went to a nearby (but smaller) town for their town wide today. There was some nice stuff and a lot of people selling their tacky junk. And a lot of used cars. I mostly got what I was looking for and a surprise - several G1 my little ponies in good shape. Just some hair that needs to be redone. There was even a flutter pony with her wings! (paid $2.50 for what is closer to being worth $30+)
I also found a woman that was selling off all of her lace, sting, and some yarn. I didn't want all of it but she ended up telling me to take it all for $4.50. I now have a lot of lace...