One Man's Junk...

I love yard sales.

There is nothing more inviting to me than a yard filled with tables and those tables filled with someone else's stuff. I have plenty of my own stuff already, but what will I miss if I don't stop and look...

The perfect yard, garage, estate sale. Let me tell you what a junk sale junkie looks for, how to get my attention so I'll stop and spend my money at your house.

The Sign. Big and bold and easy to read from a distance. Make a good, solid arrow, especially at intersections where I may go left or right. Be sure that I can see which way the arrow points before I reach the turn. If I miss the turn, or drive in circles too long, I'll just head to the next sale.

Go for contrast, big, black Sharpie on white posterboard. It's hard to read black on cardboard brown. Colors are fine, but if you use more than one sign to direct me to your house, use the same color. And please, get in your car and test out the sign's readability. Make sure it's not cluttered.

Date your sign please, not just "Fri, Sat, Sun" but the actual month and day. I can figure out which day of the week it is if you give me a date. But if it's last week's sign...see next paragraph.

Take down the signs when your sale is over.

Advertising. If you're off the beaten track, you'll probably want to pop something on Craigslist. If I'm on a mission to hit a few sales, I will check there. Put what part of town you're in and give good directions. Pictures are essential for me to go out of my way to get to your sale. And I don't want just a few individual pictures of some tired old couch or your grandmother's quilt. I want pictures of the whole yard/garage, or of the tables, so I can see how much stuff you have to browse through. Don't bother with newspaper ads, they cost money, and I don't get the paper.

Pricing. Make it cheap, people go to sales for deals. I'm not going to pay two bucks for that shirt because I know there's another sale down the road with a shirt I like that's only twenty-five cents. The best sale I went to recently had everything for twenty-five cents, except for the furniture and power tools, which were also priced very cheap. If you want it gone, price it low. If you're looking to make a profit, find another avenue to sell your stuff, such as Ebay.

Another good sale I went to recently was fill a bag of clothes for four or five bucks. Same with toys. My granddaughter got a lot of very cool stuff and those people made close to thirty bucks off me.

Know What Sells. And when. Don't put out winter clothes in the middle of July. Have another sale in September for those. It's summer, and I'm not concerned about January right now. Put gardening and other summer items out during your spring or summer sale.

Look at the stuff you have and see it with someone else's eyes, especially an artist's. Artists have a unique ability to take the everyday item and turn it into something special. Check out Etsy to see what some of these artists are creating, and what supplies you may have that someone can use. You'd be surprised to find out that box of rusty parts in the garage is just what a Steampunk artist is looking for.

Vintage is in. Revamping/reusing or "upscaling" is in. Peruse decorating sites such as HGTV for recent trends in home and garden and fashion sites such as Fashion Trendsetter to see if you have stuff other people might want to wear. Use your imagination to imagine how other people might use theirs. If it's old, priced cheaply, I'll probably buy it, just in case.

Have a lot of stuff. I drive by puny yard sales unless there's something very interesting that catches my eye. But if there's ten or twelve tables laden with potential bargains, oh yeah, I'll stop.

Location. Obviously, you can't move your house closer to mine for my convenience, though, that would be cool. But you can lay out your sale so I'll stay longer. If you don't have shade and it's a hot day, I'm going to roast, and get out as soon as I can. If you don't have shade, rent or borrow some awnings or move the sale into the garage. Make me comfortable, and I'll stay longer. And the longer I stay, the greater your chance I'll find something I think I need.

Don't put toys next to the street where moms have to worry about the kids looking at them, and the kids will look. Put those toys out of the main path of travel so they don't get in the way of your other customers too much. I like old jars and bottles, so a big (sturdy) table filled with glassware glinting in the summer sun is a sure slam-on-the-brakes way to get me to stop.

Do try to have tables for everything, if at all possible. Some people can't get up and down easily, so try to accommodate them by keeping things waist high.

Parking. If you're on a culdesac and your neighbors have fourteen cars, find someplace else to have your sale. I won't bother to stop if it's too hard to find a place to park. Same goes for streets with no parking and no close side streets. Unless there's a ton of stuff for me to browse through, I'll just move on down the road to another sale with easier access.

Extras: Have plenty of change. I often get forty bucks cash back just before I head out, so if you're the first place I stop and you don't have change for my three dollar purchase, I'll just go. I do try to get smaller bills, but it doesn't always work out that way. Be prepared.

If you want to make an extra few bucks on a warm day, sell cans of soda or bottled water for fifty cents, which should get you a nice little profit if you find them on sale. I'll pay that when I'm hot and thirsty, but don't get greedy and overcharge or I'll politely decline.

Another thing about greed, you know, it's junk. You don't want it, because if you did, you wouldn't be selling it. So when I walk up with a handful of little toys for my granddaughter and find I'm a quarter short, don't make me put one toy back. That's a true story and I'm still miffed about it.

That's good. Ta.

K