The Drive By, Continued

In my last post, I introduced the concept of the Drive By, which is, in my opinion, the most important garage saling technique.  Today I will discuss situations in which executing a drive by is the proper decision.

The most important rule regarding drive bys (byes?  bies?) is that the decision to skip a sale must be unanimous.  If even one person sees something he or she wants or even just wants to look, stop the car.  With my friends, we have an unspoken rule that if one person gets out, everyone gets out.  The reasoning behind this is that by sitting in the car you have no chance of buying an item; by getting out at a sale, you have the chance of buying something, no matter how small that chance may be.

And now I present to you the common signs of a required drive by:

• Lots of clothing: in my experience, sales that are dominated by clothing aren't worth the stop.  If you see a sale with mostly clothing, I suggest you keep on driving.
• You have to go inside: frequently billed as estate sales, these sales are put on my professionals hired to get rid of the entirety of a person's worldly possessions and make a decent profit at the same time.  These sales are dominated by overpriced (frequently as in new or close to new prices) household items.  You can find the stuff found at these sales cheaper at Goodwill or other sales.  My friends and I always pass these sales up.
• Very small sales: there's nothing worse (I speak in hyperbole) than getting out of your car only to find that you can scan a sale's contents in under ten seconds.  If the sale is small, just look from your car to see if there's anything you want.
• Lots of household items: sometimes you find sales that have a lot of one thing, such as glassware.  If you can see that all they have is items of a nature in which you are not interested, drive on.
• "Fell off the truck" sales: these are sales at which people are trying to sell many duplicate, new items.  For example, I have seen a seller with two pallets of new Seagate hard drives.  At these sales, the seller usually wants close to new price for the items -- even though they are of questionable origin -- so I suggest driving on.

The most important rule of drive bys is that when in doubt, get out (I'm sorry).  If you're unsure what's in that box, get out.  If you cannot see everything the seller has, definitely get out.  We almost drove by the house at which I bought my Kindle; we only stopped because they had some stuff further up the driveway we couldn't see.