Garage sale - advice

[terracore]

"If you can, you might want to have your garage sale on the 2nd Saturday of the month, when the HPP Swap Meet is. A lot of people have garage sales then."

Great advice. I've never done a garage sale- I have done two moving sales, only one in the last 10 years. We talked to our neighbors and solicited participation and formed a "block sale" that we were able to advertise pretty aggressively and it brought an insane amount of people. Pretty much cleaned us out. Our Hawaii container had already sailed, so what was left went into two piles, one for the salvation army and the other for the dump.

ETA: "Moving sales" (all kinds of household goods) attract more traffic than "Garage sales" ($3.00 rusty cookie sheets that cost $2.00 new). Even if you're not moving, your stuff is moving, right?

[rbakker]

Ha, yes, it's moving alright.

Thank you all for the good advice and stories, keep it coming.

[kalianna]

I did a three household garage sale at someone else's house once. It was terrible. Had to pack and load everything, unload and stage, then pack up and haul what didn't sell. WAY too much work.

[Chas]

Yeah , I feel the same way. I’d never do it again.

[Royall]

When I had a big GS, I didn't want the "early birds" either. I did make some really cool gaudy signs with arrows and the date. The signs were so cool that I was asked if they could be bought after the GS!! Anyway back to the story, I had all the signs up for a week except the last two. One to the last street to turn on and the one in front of the house. Only early bird was a neighbor and I think he was just having fun with me due to my efforts to Keep the early birds at bay!

[ElysianWort]

Charge 50 cents for just about every clothing item and a dollar or two for everything else. You'll have a successful garage sale and won't have to do it again because of things that didn't move.

[ke kaua kaua]

I had five garage sales before moving. I have gotten some good advice and bad advice. Worst advice... price everything, use coding system, offer coffee or tea, start early, no change... ..... best advice, don’t answer questions via texting or email... it will Drive you crazy. Only give information that is needed. A long list of items, pictures (3-5 of each item), and when someone buys something lower the price on the grounds they will leave with more. In our case we needed to liquidate everything to make the move simpler. Craigslist is fine but limited on pictures and sooooo many respond to post like they are the only people that want a deal.. MAKE EVERYTHING SIMPLE ... good directions, use everyday the free posts on all free sites, physically put sinage around weeks before event in well trafficked areas. On every post talk up a free (donation day).. like the last few hours of the sale...believe it or not if you offer high end items for free or next to nothing it will draw buyers. ALWAYS COUNTER .. they offer five, immediately say six. They offer ten, say 15.... ALWAYS HAGGLE.. that is the fun of it. You might loose a sale on a dumb counter offer but the amount of times you will be able to get more Will way outway the time you don’t. Plus, it is all about the money for you. If someone is at your sale they OBVIOUSLY are there to buy. Good luck

[rbakker]

Thank you for all the stories and advice, please tell me more (especially the stories)

Almost all the furniture is gone (even the TV) but you can still catch some good stuff at the garage sale this weekend, advertised here in the Punaweb Non Classifieds :

http://www.punaweb.org/Forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=26127

Thank you for all of the advice, we shall try to stop the early birds.

[rbakker]

Apologies for the bump but no garage sale on sunday, we sold almost everything on Saturday! I didn’t want anyone to make a wasted trip.
It was a lot more fun than we thought, met a lot of nice people. Thank you all.

[terracore]

Thanks for the conclusion, and glad it went well for you!