Garage sale question: Has anyone held a "make an offer" garage sale?

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

^^ I agree and then you don't have to bother with pricing every tiny item. OP might also talk to other neighbors who are going to be part of that and see what they plan to do. There is no one 'right way' to price items for garage sales. People will show up regardless of what you decide to do. It's not like they would know ahead of time what is priced and what isn't.

Showing up? Sure..staying and buying something (which is the point of the garage sale)? No, not regardless of what the host of the garage sales does. On that note though doing a 'drive-by' (the nice definition of it lol) also means someone shows up but doesn't stay depending on what they can see is available.

To the underlined thing..actually yeah you can def. know ahead of time what is priced. Many times here when people hold garage sales they'll advertise on Nextdoor (social networking site) or for my neighborhood area eNeighbors (also a social networking site). They'll use Craigslist too. Would you know everything? No. But you can know some things.

 

[_19disnA]

I was providing the OP various options of what can be done. She is welcome to take all of the advice being given and then do what makes the most sense.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

I was providing the OP various options of what can be done. She is welcome to take all of the advice being given and then do what makes the most sense.

Did I say otherwise?

I responded directly regarding your comments in bold and underlined.

 

[ajwolfe]

No I would never do this unless it was a charity thing with WAY too much stuff to price and the end goal was only to fundraise.
Personally I would leave as soon as I realized what was up and as the seller I would find it way too stressful to have to sit there and haggle with every single person.

 

[wishuponastar1984]

I used to love hosting garage sales and still like going to them as I can get things dirt cheap but I am no longer willing to waste Saturday sitting outside for people to buy my stuff. I would at least come up with a ballpark as to what you would make and decide if it is even worth your time. I am always amazed when I look around some garage sales and if they sold literally every item they have out they would only make about $100. I now list any large items (furniture, appliances, etc) on Facebook Marketplace along with BBS sites and craigslist. This generally yields better prices as you are expanding your audience and aren't forced into to trying to sell everything in 6 hours. For smaller items (under $20) I will still list on those sites but do porch pick up. I leave it by my front door and they just leave the money under the doormat. I haven't had anything stolen and porch pick up is pretty common in our area.

 

[1st_trip_10/05]

My friends and I go to garage sales every Friday in the summer. If there's no prices we tend to walk out. I do not want to ask "How much for this? How much for this?" for every single item. Either color code or something like "All clothes $1", just do something. It's also too hard when you are trying to deal with one person and you have 2-3 other people coming at you asking for prices. How can buyers and sellers keep track of what price was said?

 

[secretpantssam]

I would never feel comfortable at a 'make an offer' garage sale and would most likely leave without buying anything.

I agree. I think it would be better to have more of a price grouping as other suggested, but I'd feel weird about coming up with prices for stuff and would probably not buy much or anything at all.