Yard Sale Tips?

[LiloH]

DH and I are contemplating having a yard sale. We've typically just given stuff away so have zero experience on how to do this? Do any of you brilliant folks have tips on best practices? We're wondering in particular...
- Is there a best day? Is Saturday always the best?
- Is it better to start early to people come here first?
- Where/how do we advertise to attract the most people?
- How do you price things? We have lots of baby items and kids clothes and toys. We also have books and CDs and some electronics. What prices are usually typical for those sorts of things?

Any suggestions would be much appreciated and thanks in advance for your help!!

 

[mistysue]

Around here there seem to be old ladies who live for yard sales. They go out Thursday and Friday mornings, and check the paper for ads. If you say you are open Friday at 9, they well be pounding on your door at 9 if you aren't out yet.

All I can say about pricing is that while yard sales are cheap, if everything is too cheap people will buy less. If you have cd's marked $1.00, people will buy a stack but if they are 25 cents people walk right past them. If you price it as junk, people assume it is junk.

 

[LiloH]

Thanks MistySue! I am fascinated by the pricing thing. I was going to make everything super cheap so it would move but it sounds like that may be counterproductive? Do you think people like the haggling element and that makes them more likely to engage?

 

[Buckeye Princess]

1) Signs are key. We posted really big signs at nearby major intersections and then posted some smaller directional signs showing the way to our house. We had lots of people who told us they had not planned on coming to the sale but the signs caught their eye and they had an easy time finding us.

2) I watched what people were interested in at the sale and recommend other items I thought they might like or offered deals as they shopped. If they put something down after looking at it I'd tell them I could do a lower price or say, well if you were considering that we have this too. I'll give you both for $x.

3) For the last hour of the day I brought out plastic grocery bags. We moved remaining big ticket items to one table and had everything else fill a bag for $5. DH went to our signs and added another sign below that we had premade saying "fill a bag for $5!!! This was awesome. We had so many people come and got rid of stuff that was going to go to goodwill anyway. Plus we had people fill a bag and then also buy some of the items that we put on the table that was excluded.

 

[RooRach0906]

I did a community yard sale with my mom last saturday. I made around $120 and it was 58 cloudy, moist, and blah. I also had less than 80 items. If you want I can send you my excel page I made with my pricing and if you want I will even put what I got for the item on it, just PM if you want it. We had a good bit of furniture and all of it was gone by 10, we started at 7. I noticed most of the people we got were there between 7:45-12. Hope this helps. (We also had a sign that said Will Accept Offers)

Oh and I made signs to like dishes set, bar stools, any grouping and I priced them a lil less if sold all together. I used labels for the prices of everything else. (I would rather use the computer than handwrite a ton of stuff)

We also did what PP did kinda. We priced everything 1/2 off the last 2 hours of the sale except one table which had big ticket items and things we were not willing to reduce.

 

[LiloH]

Wow, thanks everyone! These are great ideas. RooRach, I will definitely take you up on your offer and Buckeye Princess I love the bags for $5 plan.

Another question, how do books usually sell? Do people do set prices for hardcovers or soft covers?

Thanks again, everyone!

 

[Macgyver91]

My mom and I are garage sale enthusiasts...having and going to them. We are in the process of getting one together now also. Keep this in mind when you are planning the day. If you do it on a Friday and Sat. some people won't come on Sat. because they think all will be picked over on Friday. So with that theory in mind we just advertise ours for Sat. but set it up on Friday and get the occasional looky loo but then get absolutely run over on Sat. Oh and be ready for the people that will try and talk you down off of EVERY price...doesn't matter if it is a quarter. Good luck!!

 

[tink576]

Go to a couple garage sales in your area to get an idea of how things will go!

 

[poohfriend77]

2) I watched what people were interested in at the sale and recommend other items I thought they might like or offered deals as they shopped. If they put something down after looking at it I'd tell them I could do a lower price or say, well if you were considering that we have this too. I'll give you both for $x.

Just for a different perspective... that would bug me enough that I would just put the rest of my stuff down and leave. I'm not a haggler. I like to see a price on every item, and I HATE when the seller says, "Oh, just make me an offer." I guess that doesn't make me a "true" garage saler.

In the past, when I've had big items (crib, washer/dryer, entertainment center), I've placed a craigs list ad for the item. I posted a pic and listed the price, but only included my approximate address (near corner of X and Y streets... to avoid people knocking on my door for early sales). I specified no calls or emails, no early sales, cash only, first come gets item during my normal garage sale hours. It was essentially free advertising and drew people who were interested in the bigger items.

 

[DisneyAndRedSox]

Post your yard sale on Craigslist. Since you have a lot of baby items, put this in the posting! I would even list specific baby items and the condition, if you have a non-smoking home put in the ad "all baby items come from a non-smoking home." A lot of people who are not normal yard sale buyers will hit yard sales just to look for baby items in good condition and you want them at your house first! I put two strollers on Craigslist over the weekend and by 3pm on Monday they were gone, people are looking for good baby gear on CL. Both people were looking for very specific strollers and both were a match.

I would start pretty early. My town has a town-wide yard sale every April, we even get cars from out of state. It starts at 8am, but you should see the cars cruising the streets looking for specific things at the crack of dawn (i.e. Little Tikes and Step 2 outdoor play items). I would not start a yard sale any later than 8am. Here yard sales are always on Saturdays, the only thing I have seen on Fridays are estate sales.

Do you have a close neighbor that is also doing a yard sale? Have them at the same time to draw more people. Advertise it as a "multi-family yard sale."

As for making things super cheap, IMO there are still people that will offer you less just because they always do. I once had a clock for $1 and a woman offered $.50. Face it, if I had it marked $.50, she would have offered $.25.

If you live near a Dollar Tree they have packs of pre-printed yard sale pricing stickers, yard sale signs, and packs of neon cut outs in various sizes you can use to post prices on the bigger items. My local store has a whole end-cap just for yard sale items.

 

[Candy30]

I don't know if you have children old enough but we had a garage sale to help us with spending money for Disney. My DD and DN sold coffee and muffins/cookies in the morning and then did bottled water and sno cones in afternoon. They made a little over $70 in two days.

We also had little things like red dot tag gave you 50% off item. All those items were gone by end of first day.

When you submit your ad give teasers "like baby clotes sizes x-z".

We did that for plus size and got a lot of buyers for those items specifically.

Make sure you have change!!!!! (I forgot that for my daughters booth)

The other posters are right. There are experienced garage sale buyers out there. We got an influx of people near the end looking for big bargains because they knew we wanted to get rid of everything. We also had people come an hour early. Buckeye Princess- loved your $5 bag idea! May use this next time!!!!

 

[DisneyAndRedSox]

Forgot to mention... for thing like cd's and books- have a price for one item then cheaper if buy multiple (i.e. "$1 each or 3 for $2".) Last year I had old VHS tapes and had it if you bought more, they were cheaper. Everyone bought at least 3.

 

[DisneyAndRedSox]

I don't know if you have children old enough but we had a garage sale to help us with spending money for Disney. My DD and DN sold coffee and muffins/cookies in the morning and then did bottled water and sno cones in afternoon. They made a little over $70 in two days.

Sorry to go off the OP's question- how much did your kids charge for the bottled water? I bought DD a case to sell and she can keep all the money for Hawaii.

 

[LiloH]

This is such great advice, everyone! Thanks so much. I will definitely hit the Dollar Tree and see what I can pick up for signs and tags and stuff.

Thanks again!

 

[LynnTH]

I love garage sales. I have 1 or 2 a year. Getting ready for our big city wide sale in May. People come from hours away, stay overnight in hotels and bring trailers. It is awesome. Last year I made $2300 just for my family and we did about $3500 all together with other families who had stuff in my sale.

Here are a couple things that work for me.

1. Someone else had mentioned signs. This is very important. Get Neon colors and just make them simple with arrows to follow. Make sure they are at least poster size. I hate those small signs that you are driving by and cannot read where the sale is, so I don't go.

2. Price everything. I too hate sales that don't have prices on them.

3. If you can find more people to have in your sale the better. We have a 3 car garage and our garage fits about 12 Long Tables that are full plus a ton of stuff we set out on the driveway (if it is not raining). The more stuff you have the more people are going to stop. I won't stop if I see a sale with only a few tables in the garage.

4. Group everything in sections like at a store. I will have a table for Health & Beauty, Books, Toys, Holiday, Kitchen, Clothes -sorted by gender and size. I also have an aunt that has rounders from a store and so we are able to hang up all our clothes. I had purchasedsizers for the rounders years ago online. So, I will have one rounder with girls clothes, another for boys and another for adults. I will then have the grouped according to sizes. I also hang up all purses and stuff like that too. I'm sure you don't have rounders but if you could put up something that you could hang clothes on it is so much easier for people to look through them and they don't get into one big mess on the table.

5. Make sure you have ones, fives, tens and quarters for change. I don't mark anything less than a quarter and mark everything in increments of 25 cents.

6. Put larger items in the driveway. It draws people in.

7. I usually have a large box at the end of the driveway as a FREE Box. I put in anything I don't think is worthy of selling but don't just want to throw away. That free box always ends up empty and I seem to add to it as the sale goes on.

8. Put an ad in Craiglist and list all your major items. We also put an ad in the local paper. Many of the people we had were because of this ad.

9. Be ready for hagglers. But also remember you don't have to take their offers. Some I will and some I won't. Depends on the item and how nice the person is about it. I have had some real winners coming up and telling me how much they are going to pay for an item. I had to tell them "no" quite a few times - they just didn't get it. They were very rude and I don't like giving deals to rude people.

10. Make sure everything is clean and in working order. Have outlets available to try any electronics out.

I think that is it for now. I love having garage sales. They can be alot of work but worth it. All my money goes towards our vacation fund, which next year is a cruise on the RCCL Allure of the Seas. So, hoping this sale will pay for the remaining balance of the cruise.

 

[puffkin]

My neighbors are always astounded at how well I do at our community yardsale. You got lots of great tips already. I don't agree about pricing things too cheap....

My number 1 tip is:
Price things to sell, not to make money. At the end of the day you will be astounded at how much you actually do make!

1. Definitely price in lots....ie 50 cents each or 3 for $1. You will sell more.
2. Sort.
3. Price things.
4. I don't haggle much (since I price low to begin with). If someone does haggle, I usually just take their offer unless it is ridiculously low. I want to get rid of stuff!
5. Open super early. I am out as soon as it starts to get light. I do most of my business before 9am.
6. Hang clothes up (I use chains across my garage, one hanger per link). Kids clothes sort by type/size. Nobody cares about brand names at a yard sale. Price to sell (I do 50 cent a piece....coats and really nice sets maybe a $1 or $2). If you want to make more money go the consignment route on clothes.
7. Furniture, electronics, big ticket items I always try to sell on Craigslist first. Yardsale is last resort to get rid of it....most people don't come to yardsales with more than $100 in cash.
8. Price in increments of 25 cents.
9. Have a free junk box. Kids love it and it draws people in. Seriously!
10. And again, PRICE TO SELL! I cannot reiterate this enough.

 

[tink576]

I like to see a price on every item, and I HATE when the seller says, "Oh, just make me an offer." I guess that doesn't make me a "true" garage saler.

ME TOO! If I walk up to a house and it's just "make an offer" I turn around and go to the next house, I don't even bother.

 

[WeLuvDCL]

If you have the time and really want to make some money, I would highly recommend organizing a community yard sale. I did this when we moved.

I made little flyers with all the details (date (and rain date jic), I'd get permits, where I'd advertise, and also included my e-mail for people to let me know what kinds of items they were selling) and hung them on everyone's doorknob. I asked for $5 from each home for permits and advertising costs, including signs. We had 20 home participate and I came out $2 ahead after buying permits, buying material to make signs and paying for advertising in 2 papers (plus I did Craigslist and 2 other local websites that allow posting of yard sales). Make sure you pay the extra and have "COMMUNITY YARD SALE" in large bold print. Then immediately follow it with the number of homes involved and the names of the streets. If you are really close with your neighbors it may even be fun to have a "Sign Design" get together so everyone can help with that part.

All the streets in our neighborhood were lined with cars in both directions from 8am until at least 1pm when clouds started to roll in. (Just beware that the people not participating may be a little upset with the traffic jams )

The only large items we had for sale were a 8yo washer and dryer and a fish tank. Other than that, all I had were clothes, VHS/CDs and decorative items.
We made $1300 and I think I was selling stuff cheap.

Especially in this economy and with the price of gas, people are more likely to go to community yard sales than single yard sales. People that don't normally go to yards sales will go to community yard sales because it's easier for them. Plus, you will get more people from a farther distance.

Everyone was thanking me afterward and raving about what a success it was.

 

[LiloH]

Hey folks, OP here! We did our yard sale yesterday and it was a huge success! We made about $500 and, best of all, we cleared out so much stuff from our house!
Thanks SO much for all the tips. We used basically all of them and I think it went fantastic.

A couple of funny details...
We posted a 7am start time and had people at our house at 6:40!! We weren't even done setting up yet!
By 7:30 we had sold all our video games and all our CDs. One man bought all the video games by 7:15 and another man bought all the CDs by 7:30. That was a huge win in my opinion just because I wanted them gone.
People will haggle over the most absurd things. Someone tried to talk me from $.25 to $.15 on a little elephant figurine. Seriously??? 10 cents???
Someone bought my used Crocs for $3 but no one bought the brand new, still in the box, pair for $5. Weird.

Anyway, thanks again! I couldn't have done it without you all!