How to Read Garage Sale Signs, or, What Was that Person Thinking?

It is a sad fact that many garage sale signs look like they were made by someone who has never been to a garage sale.  The ideal garage sale sign would be easy to read: made of neon paper with a single large arrow and the words “YARD SALE” in bold, easily seen from one hundred yards.  Few signs live up to these standards so be prepared to have to search for signs.  This is where garage saling with a partner really pays off: having someone besides the driver to look for signs.

The best place to post signs is on light or sign posts ten to twenty yards before the intersection in areas with low speed limits and around fifty yards away in areas with higher speed limits.  Most people don’t do this and instead just put the signs at the intersection so be prepared to turn at any intersection.  Don't expect the sign to be on the sign or light pole; I've seen signs on the ground, in trees, and stuck to parked cars.  If the arrow is obscured, a good rule of thumb is that a sign on the right side of the street indicates a right turn and a sign on the left side of the street indicates a left turn.  There are, of course, many exceptions to this as many people don’t place their signs logically.

Once you have seen a seen a sign and turned into a neighborhood, it should be pretty easy to find the sale.  Do not turn until you see a sign telling you to do so; if you don’t see a sign after four or five minutes, give up and turn around because it’s probably an old sign from a previous week.

One important thing to keep in mind is that many — really, probably most — sales use a single sign style.  This means that if you see two different styles of sign on your way to one sale there are most likely two different sales down the way.  So, if one sign tells you to turn from the street you are following, it often pays off to continue down the street which you turned off of once you have found that first sale.

Finding People with Whom You Can Garage Sale

Garage saling with at least one partner is important because it makes garage saling cheaper, safer, and more entertaining.

Saling is cheaper with a group because you save gas money.  By rotating drivers, I drive approximately every three weeks.  I calculate I make enough money reselling garage sale purchases to cover both my portion of gas expenditures and my purchases.  You can also potentially make more money because a partner may be able to tell you an item’s value that you yourself may not know. 

When I say that garage saling in a group is safer I don’t mean it’s because someone is less likely to shank a member of a group over an individual.  Rather, passengers in the vehicle can serve as sign spotters so the driver has plenty of warning for when he or she has to turn for the next sale, eliminating or at least reducing the necessity for sudden lane changes or stops.  

Finally, having someone else in the car provides some entertainment between — and at — sales.

I was surprised how many people are willing/want to garage sale.  As I stated in my first post, I started in high school looking for gifts for my friends.  When I went to college, I didn’t have anyone with whom I could go to garage sales.  However, my friends at school were impressed by the amount of junk I had and were quite receptive to the idea of going garage saling when introduced to the concept.  I’ve since found that many people are interested in at least trying out garage saling.  If you’re the type of person who finds garage saling interesting then I’m sure you have at least a couple friends who find it interesting as well.  Just ask around.

Location Pt. 2

This post continues directly from my previous post.

It may take you a couple times to find some good neighborhoods.  There are several options to make your chances of finding good neighborhoods better.  The first is to simply ask someone you know who does go garage saling in your area.  Similarly, if there’s a forum/community website for your area, you could ask people there for advice.  When I was in Omaha for a wedding in July, I asked r/Omaha for advice on garage saling neighborhoods in the city.  Another option, if you have any friends who garage sale, is to ask to go with them.  Finally, you can look on Craiglist to try to find neighborhoods with a high density of sales.  Keep in mind that most sales aren’t listed on Craigslist so with this method you’re getting an incomplete picture.  If you do use Craigslist, be sure not to just go point-to-point from a bunch of addresses you wrote down as I discussed above.

One thing Craigslist is good for is looking for neighborhood sales.  I strongly urge you to not go out of your way for neighborhood sales; I have never been to a neighborhood sale that had as many participants as it claimed in advertisements.  The typical neighborhood sale has between one-sixth and one-fourth as many participating families as it claims; if you see an ad for a neighborhood sale consisting of items from twenty families, expect maybe five to actually have stuff out for sale.  I actually went to a neighborhood sale one time that had exactly zero participants.  Who organized it?   Also, during neighborhood sales, many participants put out only one or two pieces of overpriced furniture or other undesirables yet are still considered participants for advertising purposes.  Therefore, you should never go out of your way for neighborhood sales.  If they’re on your route, go ahead and stop.  One good item makes it worth it.  If you have to drive more than a couple minutes out of your way, don’t bother.  It’s not worth it.

In the near future I’ll be posting about reading people’s signage (this may seem unnecessary, but it’s surprisingly how poorly marked most sales are) and finding people willing to go saling with you.  Then, I will move on to bargaining.

Location Pt. 1

There are two ways to choose where you are going to garage sale.  The first way is to write down a bunch of addresses from Craigslist and use your GPS to drive to each of the addresses you wrote down.  This is the wrong way — you end up missing a majority of the sales because most sales aren’t listed on Craigslist and your GPS takes you the most efficient route, not the route that has the most sales.  The other way is to choose some neighborhoods ahead of time and drive around those.  While this may seem like you’re blindly driving around looking for sales, it really is the more efficient method if you know the type of neighborhoods to choose.

Demographics is key when choosing an area for garage saling.  Many people assume that garage salers typically go to upper-class neighborhoods to find the exceptional bargains.  In reality, garage saling in these neighborhoods invariably proves disappointing: sales are relatively infrequent and those sales that do exist contain too many “undesirable” items, such as clothing and furniture. (Clothing and furniture are fine if you’re looking for clothing and furniture; however, sales dominated by clothing and furniture tend to have little of anything that I consider “good” garage sale items.  More on this another time.)

The enlightened garage saler goes to solidly middle class neighborhoods.  Not upper middle class, not lower middle class, but solid middle class.  In my experience, neighborhoods composed of older but well-kept houses are best.  Note well-kept; that’s key.  Well-kept older homes implies two important things: (1) the owners have money to buy nice things but (2) they don't have too much money so that they can just give the stuff away.

Once you’ve decided upon some neighborhoods to check out, you need to know where to drive.  All you need to do is drive the main streets around the neighborhood and follow any signs for garage sales you see.  Don’t randomly drive on minor streets in subdivisions without having seen a sign; you won’t find anything.

Note that driving is key.  Garage sales are too spread apart to justify walking.  The average person walks at 2.5-3 miles per hour, 4 miles per hour is fast.  On a typical garage saling day, I will drive from 25-40 miles but as few as 20 miles on a day of many consistently exceptional sales.  You just cannot walk fast enough to justify the time you invest.  Some of my friends have suggested biking to sales on several occasions.  I think this is an absurd idea.  Yes, you can bike 15-20 miles per hour.  Still, this is too slow when you have a 30 mile loop that you follow and you need to continuously stop at sales for 1-7 minutes per sale.  And what happens when you get that $5 kayak? (my goal is to get a sea kayak for $10 or less; no luck so far).  Walking or biking just don’t make getting your purchases home convenient.

"So I Want to Go Garage Saling, When do I go?"

I decided to start my discussion of serious garage saling strategies with an introduction regarding when you should go saling.  This will be followed by a discussion of where you should go; I feel these topics need to be covered before things like bargaining because you can’t bargain if you can’t find any decent sales.

Really, the question of when you should garage sale can be broken down into three parts: what season, what day of the week, and what time of day.  Each of these will be addressed in turn.

In my experience, summer is prime garage saling season in Southern California.  Quality and volume of sales begins to falter sometime in late October/early November and don’t really pick up until sometime in March.  For those of you living in states that actually have weather; I imagine garage saling season is considerably shorter; I have heard that in the midwest garage sales only occur from late March to early June.  If you’re new to garage saling; I suggest going out your first time in either May or June.

Interestingly, the pattern I described above didn’t hold true for 2011.  Instead of sales peaking in July or August, sales were actually consistently poor in July through the end of  August; it wasn’t until September that we had a weekend of consistently good sales.  I’m unsure why sales peaked so late this year; in the previous four years I have been saling, early summer held the best sales.

Saturday is the day to go out garage saling.  There are sales that occur on Friday and Sunday as well, but only Saturday has enough sales to justify your time and gas.  Sure, if you happen to drive past a garage sale on Friday or Sunday, feel free to get out and look.  However, don’t head out Friday afternoon hoping to go to a bunch of sales.  You won’t find them.  Besides, Friday sales are almost always disappointing.  I, personally, have never bought anything on a Friday.

So now you know you should go some Saturday in either late spring or early summer.  But what time do you head out?  This, really, is a matter of personal preference, but I strongly suggest leaving your house at 7:00.  If you leave any earlier, not all of the sales are set up and you miss many sales in the areas through which you are driving.  Most sales are set up or almost fully set up by 7:00, so by getting there early you have one of the first opportunities to get the exceptional deals.  Also, if you leave much later, you’re cutting into the time you have available for saling.  Remember that many sales clean up by 10:30 or 11:00, especially in the summer.

Before you go out your first time, check Craigslist to see what the general opening time for sales in your area is (just search the “garage sales” section of “all for sale/wanted”).  You may find that sales in your area set up a different time.  When I was in Berkeley, California, I was surprised that sales start around 11:00 AM and end around 4:00 PM.  It’s worth your time to do the research.

If you happen to come across a sale where the people are either setting up or cleaning up, get out and look.  If they’re setting up, that means you are some of, if not the, first people to look at the stuff, meaning you potentially can get some amazing deals.  If they’re cleaning up, you can often offer next to nothing for things and get them because the sellers don’t want to take the stuff inside or to Goodwill.  Don’t feel awkward in these situations.  There is no room for awkwardness in garage saling.

There are a few times you should definitely avoid saling.  Any time in December has potential to be very disappointing.  Sales are slim even the first weekend of this month and as you get closer to New Year’s sales become slimmer and slimmer.  There are virtually no sales Easter and Thanksgiving weekends.  However, the weekends before and after Easter weekend tend to have a higher than average number of sales.  Finally, don’t go saling when it’s raining, when it’s been raining, or when rain is predicted.  If it rained Friday afternoon or night, don’t go; there won’t be many sales.  If it rained early Friday, it was clear for most of the day, and no further rain is predicted, there will most likely be sales as usual.

If it happens to start raining lightly while you’re saling, it’s sometimes worth it to continue on for a little while.  Oftentimes you can get good deals because people just want to get rid of the stuff instead of taking it inside.  Then, if it stops raining, you can continue on.

One thing to keep in mind is that three day weekends (ie, Memorial Day, Labor Day, etc.) are variable days.  Some years the sales are remarkable; other days there aren’t many at all.  I would suggest going saling on these days; you can always turn around and go home if sales prove disappointing.

Next post will be a discussion of where to look for good sales and what areas to avoid.  Then, as I said, I will start introducing some bargaining strategies.