Yard Sales - I hate it when...

[DisGal520]

Each year the neighborhood community does a charity yard sale. We try to participate and price our items with the theory "price it to go". Some things do not get marked, but its not intentional since it took days to get everything together. We also stock up on dollar bills and change to give change.

And inevitably like you all say the early bird guys who run thrift and antique shops come by as dawn is breaking and start asking what has not been brought out yet (as you ARE trying to bring everything out).

These are the same guys who never have anything less than a twenty to pay for a 1.00 item. These are the guys we respond to by saying "sorry we don't have change either".

And what is with all the people who want to use the bathroom????? The answer to that is always NO!

We had brand new with tags still on leather handbags donated for the sale. Priced them extremly reasonable at 5.00 and had a woman offer to pay a quarter for one. She got a NO from me on that.


Here's the favorite scenario. The friend who wanted to join in and bring her items to the sale and help out. You tell her to get there before 8 if she is serious. Sale starts at 8 and she shows up at 10 munching on a McMuffin and asks for help to take her items out of her van while you're trying to deal with 3 buyers at once.



DisGal

 

[d1gitman]

i hate it when people complain about yardsales. c'mon. of course people are looking for bargains. It's Junk! as far as the low lifes stealing, well that just shows the lack of character in that person.

with that being said, we will be wasting a weekend of ours to get rid of our junk. i have never run a yardsale before and hope to never run one again. however, it's so hard to get rid of crap these days, even the trashmen are picky! all i care is that some sap takes my space wasting junk for whatever price. if someone has to steal something, good for them, they proved they could outsmart a yardsale, all for virtually worthless junk. what masterminds

 

[seashoreCM]

1 - A yardsale with no prices. :

Normally I shun yard sales with no prices. Or rather I arrive and look around for a moment and then leave.

But it is awkward to ask for a price, get a price, and then offer something lower. So a priceless (no Mastercard pun intended) yard sale is an excellent place to make really low offers.

Yield a party line in an emergency

Nobody goes in my house period. (Applied to the above quote too back in its day and age.) I'm not rude at all but I'll say sorry even if it is your kid who needs to go.

Disney hints: http://members.aol.com/ajaynejr/disney.htm

 

[NMW]

But don't you feel guilty filling our landfills and dumps with items that someone else can use? When we have things that don't sell at the yard sale, we put it at the edge of our driveway with a free sign. It's gone by the end of the day.

Most of our stuff DID get taken by someone after we put the trash out. In fact, a lot of it got taken! There are people that pick garbage that drive through my development every trash night/day. I don't care if people take the stuff.

 

[mslclark]

I hate it when people steal things from my garage sale.

Me too - Last yard sale my mom had, someone went inside the house while we were busy and stole my wallet! Luckily we caught her, the store where she used my credit card got her on video tape. Then she came back the next day and my mom recognized her. We got her tag and called the police. They arrested her!

 

[pearlieq]

You know, the Sci-Fi channel has been rerunning the old series Joan of Arcadia on Friday nights lately.

I was wating the week's episode off of the DVR today and it featured the main character having a yard sale. A new friend of hers came by and asked to go inside to go to the bathroom. All I could think about was this thread!

Naturally, he stole something from them!

 

[OceanAnnie]

Me too - Last yard sale my mom had, someone went inside the house while we were busy and stole my wallet! Luckily we caught her, the store where she used my credit card got her on video tape. Then she came back the next day and my mom recognized her. We got her tag and called the police. They arrested her!

She made a number of decisions that took a lot of nerve! What did she come back for?!

My dad had some antique golf clubs that were in our collective yard sale years ago. This man just walked off with them while we were busy. Dad was talking to a lady about a sale and saw him walk away with them and by the time he asked all of us if he paid for them (no he didn't) he was long gone.

 

[berlymama2]

But don't you feel guilty filling our landfills and dumps with items that someone else can use? When we have things that don't sell at the yard sale, we put it at the edge of our driveway with a free sign. It's gone by the end of the day.

There is also a great site called freecycle.org. You can post things you want to give away that are still good any time of the year.

We have given away a standard size counter with sink when we upgraded a bathroom to granite, a kitchen sink, cinder blocks from an old garden, new deck lattice. All was excellent condition that we just didn't want anymore. You can either pick a specific person for the item or just say it will be out at your address at day/time and its first come first serve. It's a great site to unload your unwanted stuff AND it's good for our environment. Check it out.

 

[staticgirl50]

Agree I love freecycle! We had someone steal at our tag sale last year. They pretended they wanted to buy this silly goose with different outfits per season (My MIL's -Not ours!) while they were stealing all my silver jewelry!

 

[jcgonczi]

I hate it when people steal things from my garage sale. At least make me an offer (it was priced) before stealing it.

I have a great story about this. Early on the first day of our sale 4 women stopped by. They were Jehovah's Witnesses and started "witnessing" to me. They told me how as part of their ministry they went to garage sales on Fridays before work. That way they could shop for bargains and witness to people at the same time. Well....while one of them was giving me this spiel, another one stole a brand new, sealed in plastic bath sponge that was in the 10 cent box! AND she was bragging to her friend on the way out to the car! Great way to win people over to Christ - start by breaking one of the 10 commandments! Unbelievable!

 

[moredisneyplease]

shoplifters!! I hate that people steal from yard sales.........sad sad sad

 

[labdogs42]

When I did yard sales at my parent's house, people would show up as we were bringing out the tables, hawk over everything, and then ask to look in our garage. I guess they were looking for collectibles, but it really put me off. At that point, I don't even want their money.

Those are the people I can't stand, too. If the sale starts at 8 am, I need the hour before to get set up! Don't start shopping before I have my stuff out there! Stores don't let you in before they open, why should i haggle with you an hour before my sale is slated to start?? AAAGH!!

 

[dhertz]

Reading this thread has got me excite for my garage sale coming up. It will be my first time, so hopefully everything will go ok. If not maybe I'll have an interesting story to post. I just can let my DW see these posts or she may begin to have second thoughts about our garage sale.

 

[sarahlovesmickey]

my mom and I are having a yard sale this coming Saturday. I am LMAO over this thread, but when we had a yardsale 2 years ago, I remember a lot of this stuff happening!!! LOL....some people....

 

[rbork]

Good Thread....
I had the ' mother of sales' a couple years ago just before I moved. Sold almost all my furniture. I had people RUNNING across the yard at 7am! Some woman says she wants X Y and Z pieces. I said it would be something like 800$ and she whips out 800$ in CASH@! hunh?
Holy cow, I was amazed!

I even put a broken washer by the curb for garbage pick up and someone asked to take it. ummm.sure let me help you!

I hate it when the early birds show up before 6am! I wake at 5:30 to put stuff out and the professionals seem to show up early.

I only wish I'd go to sales like mine where I clean and present a nice priced item. I hate old, dirty, dusty, stained items priced at something rediculous or not priced at all!

And bags....NO I don't have bags. Bring your own.

 

[TheRustyScupper]

I hate it when
. . . people hold yard sales and complain about customers
. . . people hold yard sales and don't want to bargain, at any price
. . . people hold yard sales and are surprised at the general public that shows up

 

[barbarabini]

I hate when:

a person comes to your sale and attempts to use counterfeit bills.

Twice, this happened -- same way both times, person attempted to purchase fifty cent --dollar item with a dubious hundred dollar bill in order to get real $$$ change.

 

[DisGal520]

Good Thread....


And bags....NO I don't have bags. Bring your own.

Oh yes - forgot about the request for bags. Paper or plastic? Like they can't carry things the 8 feet to their car.




DisGal

 

[CherylA]

1. I hate it when they drive and park their car right on your driveway.
2. I hate it when they stop the car, leave the motor running, and practically run past the tables.
3. We usually have a very wide variety of items, sometimes when somebody walks past every table, not even stopping or hesitating even once and leaves. I look at my wife and say "What in the world could they be looking for?"
4. How about the old guys who always ask, "You got any coins, silver or gold?"
5. How about the "drive-by" shoppers. Scan your tables FROM THE STREET, in a MOVING car! LOL

I get all these things combined at my sales. Every time we have a tag sale we get the drive through shoppers. They pull up near the sale roll down their window and start shouting things to me. This past weekend we had a sale and a man pulls up rolls down his window and shouts, do you have any vacuum cleaners, what? no we don't... how about musical instuments... no we don't have those. Floor lamps, what? FLOOR LAMPS? Well we have some lamps, well how tall are they? Look buddy you're going to have to get out of your car! And thats not as bad as 2 years ago when a woman pulled up and asked us to bring the items she was interested in to her car for her to see. My MIL ran things out to her. She bought a few things and never left her car. That folks is my all time biggest yard sale pet peeve!

 

[Gokstate]

Okay - every couple of years I forget how much work hosting a garage sale is and I cave to friends or family's requests to have one together. I was pregnant with my second child, at my weird cousin's house who wouldn't let US in to pee unless we took off our socks and shoes, I was HOT and tired because the co-host cousin who wasn't pregnant kept going inside to nap. Her dad (uncle) is super nice, super-prude, etc. I was tired of the hagglers, tired of the drive-by's etc. and some woman drove up and started asking questions about all of our stuff. The uncle kept taking different pieces out to the car for her to view and I finally said to everyone around "that woman needs to get her lazy @ss out of the car if she wants to buy any of this crap". Turns out I really, really offended uncle because this woman was missing a leg. Um... let me remove my foot from my mouth now.