Garage Sale Advice

This is very timely...

http://money.aol.com/top5/general/garage-sales

I would do a post on Craigslist.com. You could do under Garage Sale and under the baby/kids section (if you have alot of baby/kids stuff). It is free.

First make sure that you do not need a permit by your city/village. I would then advise to post an ad in the newspaper listing hot ticket items (ex. tools, furniture, baby items, crafts). Then I would find/make the biggest and clearest signs possible and post them at key intersections. Make sure that where you post is allowed. I would make sure that all items are tagged by the night before. People come EARLY to garage sales. I recommend masking tape instead of the store bought price tags as those fall off. Put initials by whose item it is. Make sure you have a healthy bank (ex. 4 10's, 8 5's, 30 1's, one roll of each coin). Also make out sheets with columns/lines so you can write down the price of each item and who gets the proceeds. Also, make sure you have a lot of bags (shopping/plastic/newspaper to wrap fragile items). Good luck!

D.
A few things I did was I priced almost everything. Or grouped things in a lot all for the same price. The week of the garage sale I had my tables already set up in the gargage. People tend to show up an hour earlier than your sale. When you're setting up they're already there. Rummaging. So having your tables set up the night before will help out. Bring the bigger items closer to the street. People do drive bys. When it gets close to the end you can offer a half price sale or anything they fit in a plastic bag is $5. If , you really want to get rid of things. You can make exceptions no electronics, videos, whatever.

Good Luck.

I had a yard sale last summer against the wishes of my husband. (He hates them) And we managed to do two things to make it easy:
1) Advertise a lot, but simply. On the day of the yard sale, we put up huge posters that just said "YARD SALE" and an arrow. Make them big enough so a car can see it half a block away and have time to turn. They don't need times or address--they don't have time to read that when driving, and if they turn down your street, they'll find you. Put up flag banners and/or balloons at the house. They will come, and early.
2) Don't bother to price anything beforehand. All the prices are arbitrary and people will bargain you down anyway. Why bother to go through every piece when maybe no one even wants it? I made up prices when people asked me. And I would ask "Is that all you're going to get?" I encouraged people to shop and bring everything together, then I'd give them one price for everything. It's harder for them to nickel and dime you on a group price, and it encourages them to take more.

And yes, presentation is important. So spend your time at the sale presenting and selling well, not the whole week before buying little stickers and pricing every item. We got rid of tons of stuff and my husband only complained that it rained at the end, otherwise he said it was ok. and if you have baby stuff, don't forget to post it here!

We had color-coded price tags. Green=1.00, red = .75, blue = .50, yellow = .25. We had to point out the coding to people (even though we had multiple signs indicating the coding) but it made pricing go a lot faster.
We just put our initials on the price tags. You can take the tags off and stick them to a piece of paper to indicate whose item was sold for how much.
We also sold cold bottled water for 50 cents - it was in the 90's the weekend of our sale, and we sold a lot of water! If your kids our old enough, the water sale proceeds could go in their piggy banks. Like a lemonade stand, I guess.

I've always posted on craigslist.org.
It's free but a lot of people check it for sales. It's really easy to use. HOpe that helps and good luck with the sale.

Hi D.,
I've had a few garage sales and my best advice to you is to first price everything cheaply! People are looking for deals and will not buy if things are too expensive. Also be ready to bargain. A lot prople will offer you half of what your asking but items still need to be cheap. If you have kids clothing, ask $1.00 per item or less. If it's stained or torn, no one will buy it no matter how cheap it is. That's been my experience. Second, advertising is a must. I put a small ad in the newspaper but I put signs (big ones on bright neon paper attached to heavy cardboard) all around the neighborhood (even a 4-5-6 blocks away) especially near busy intersections pointing which way to go. I think this helped make my sales very sucessful. Put big toys closest to street so people see them. Toys seem to bring out everyone! I have to say it's a lot of work preparing for a garage sale but you can make good money in the end. After our sale was over, I donated whatever was left. I refused to bring the stuff back into my house. Hope this was helpful.
S.

I have recently had a couple of garage sales and all the others advice is right on. I would add though...
1. When you display your items...it's easy to get tired of setting up and you are tempted to just throw all purses in a box, all stuffed animals in a box, all shoes in a box and just mark the box. Avoid doing this! People won't look through boxes. We did that and no one even looked...as soon as we took stuff out of the boxes it sold like hotcakes!

2. If you have a lot of clothes we have found that what works well is to get sacks from your local grocery store and sell clothes "All you can fit in this bag for $2 or $3" Then you don't have to mark each piece of clothing and you tend to get rid of a lot more clothes this way. When you see someone's bag is full rather than letting them over stuff simply offer to take that bag and give them a new one to start. Works great!

3. A lot of people will drive by slowly and scope things out before they decide if they will bother pulling over to shop. Make sure your interesting items are out closest to the street and keep rotating your best stuff out in view. If they are curious they will stop. The bargaining thing can be irritating so sometimes we will price things a little higher knowing that someone will want it for less, then you get closer to what you were hoping for.

Good Luck!

Hi D.,
We've had a few garage sales and they went pretty good. Here are a couple of things I've learned:

1) You probably need to get a garage sale permit (in Chicago,
definitely).

2) use bright neon colored signs and use large black print.
Make sure you're allowed to post signs in certain areas
because there are restrictions.

3) advertise in the local newspaper or in the city paper.

4) Have a cash box with plenty of change (coins and
dollars) in advance and it is a good idea to have
someone be the cashier at all times.

5) You'll need a system (like a notebook with columns) to
keep track of what your Dad sells, and what you
sell. This way, you'll know how to divy up the $$.

6) Be prepared to bargain. People don't like buying
things at garage sales without bargaining. Recently,
I tried to get $1 off if I bought two toys one was $5 &
the other was $4. The toys weren't even cleaned up
and parts were missing. The guy scowled at me, and said
"No way" so I put everything back that I was going to
buy.

7) Use sticky circles to put prices on things. The circles
can be color coded to separate your Dad's stuff from
yours. Clothes are trickier for pricing - we used small
staples and sometimes pins.

Good Luck!

Diana

Hi!

I've had many, many yard sales over the years, and I shop yard sales a lot. My suggestions would be as follows:

1. Be sure the lettering on your signs is LARGE (9" minimum)and use minimal wording. You don't need times, dates, items etc. Just your address with an arrow is sufficient. Remember, people are cruising past and don't have much time to read...

2. With mutiple people, I like to keep a notebook and record the amount of each item purchased with the initials of the seller after it. Then draw a line under the last item, or circle the total of each sale. That way if someone bargains, you can figure out later whose total it should come off of. If you make a page per person, you are constantly flipping back and forth, and it's harder to keep the total right if someone is buying a lot.

3. Use a hip sack/money belt instead of a cash box. That way you can move around the sale and not have to worry about the money being left alone if someone has a question about an item, or if it get's really busy.

4. Make sure you have a lot of change (both bills and coins).

Hope this helps and I hope it goes well for you!

where do you live
it depends on house location i think
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