I lost my yard sale virginity last year. My block hosted a multi-family event, and I joined in, offering up my most useless belongings to strangers. Normally, I put my cast-offs on eBay and rid myself of them one at a time, but these were things that were too bulky to mail or had dubious if any value. I had been dreading a long day, held captive in my yard, but the time raced by because it turned out to be not so much a yard sale as a reality show.
The centerpieces of my sale were an old window air conditioner; a bread maker that took several hours to produce a hunk of bread that looked and tasted like a football; a huge, round “party” George Foreman grill that the previous owners of our house had wisely left behind; and the literal kitchen sink. We had recently replaced ours.
In addition, there were several tables of the usual suspects: purses I had grown tired of, clothes that made me look fat, vases that had no reason for being, novelty glassware, the chronic Christmas gifts of back and neck massagers of every shape and size, kitchen gadgets bought on a whim, and books and DVDs I would never read or watch again.
As my husband watched me price things, he made the usual husband noises. “I forgot we had that! If I knew we still had that, I’d be using it! Don’t sell that! That’s mine. I know I don’t use it, but I might one day.”
I turned a deaf ear to his protests, and was even more annoyed when his family called him on his cell, asking for a rundown of what I had out and putting dibs on things they wanted (for free!). A few items disappeared back into the house. But his biggest sacrifice was the big sale of the day. A set of speakers sold for $20.
I let go of a $40 George Foreman tabletop roaster for $5 after a woman declared her desperate need for it, and then refused to pay the $10 I was asking. I negotiated to $8. She still refused and I caved. Shame on me, but it was on my gotta-go short list, a purchase I regretted every time I saw it gathering dust in the cabinet. Better not to see it. And it was the only thing on the gotta-go short list that sold. Even at what I considered give-away prices, yard salers want to pay less. The 10 and 25 cent junk steadily moved, while anything priced at $10 or more, no matter what a great deal it was, was shunned. People would pick up the price tag and then drop it as if it burnt their fingers.
My most popular things turned out to be the purses, vases and novelty glassware. I don’t know why. Surely, everyone on Planet Earth has more than enough of them.
Only one purchase made sense. A small boy and his dad immediately pounced on a vase that was the size and shape of a softball. They bought it and drove away, without looking at any of the other sales on the block. I figured there was a Japanese fighting fish in their future, and this was the perfect bowl.
I felt bad about many of my other sales. There were a half-dozen mother-son teams where the son was retirement age and the mom nursing home age, and yard saling on Saturday morning was their together time. Old mom was allowed to buy whatever crazy thing she wanted, and these moms wanted some crazy things. I could picture their homes overflowing with purses, vases and novelty glassware, and it made me a little sad that my stuff was not going anywhere useful but was just joining a massive junk pile in someone else’s musty house.
Serious looking women, traveling alone so they could move faster, came early. So did the father-son teams who were buying to resell. The seniors came next and all knew each other. Their paths crossed every Saturday morning as they traveled the sales. They were most likely to buy things that had no practical purpose, although they did fight over my toilet paper holder shaped like a lighthouse.
During my breaks, when my husband took over to discourage sales, I checked out the neighbors. I took no money to avoid replacing my junk with their junk, but was sorely tempted by my one junk weakness: art. Most of the paintings in my house are rescued from the dump and other people’s trash. I would have bought the huge painting of a cat sitting on a sofa if it hadn’t been $5. To earn $5, I have to sell a boatload of novelty glassware. I want something for nothing, too.
In the end, we only moved about a fourth of what we put out. We still have the kitchen sink and that damn, giant, round George Foreman party grill. And yes, the bread maker. “Everyone is selling bread makers,” we were told all day long. We made $78. That’s $39 a piece, or $6 an hour. But I’m ready to do it again to watch the parade of human nature that yard sales attract and to imagine what the story is behind each purchase. It’s like a telenovela.
Oh, and I learned one useful thing: don’t sell candles at yard sales. My packets of unused birthday candles fused together in the sun into one big wax splat.
