Two Sides of the Spectrum

I didn't get around to posting last week because I was on vacation -- backpacking in King's Canyon National Park -- without any sort of internet connection. I'm finally back and recovered so I thought I should get around to updating. It seems I've gotten pretty bad at even posting once per week.

As I've pointed out before, many sellers have no idea what many of the items they are selling actually are. These sort of sellers come in two varieties: the "good" (the seller assumes the item is worthless and will sell it for next to nothing) and the "bad" (the seller assumes the item is worth a lot and often refuses to bargain).

The easiest way to determine with which sort of seller you are dealing is to simply examine the item or ask about its condition. Good sellers are usually pretty passive and often don't know if the item works or not; sellers who are determined to make more than the item is worth often come across as short or even aggressive. You can always try to bargain with bad sellers but it's often not worth your time, unfortunately.

Baader Meinhof Revisited

Back in June, I talked about the item of the day, the phenomenon in which particular items keep showing up at different sales throughout the day. Today's item, for example, was sleeping bags.

Serious salers will also notice "items of the month" or items for even larger periods. For whatever reason, some uncommon items appear not frequently enough to be considered the item of the day for any particular day but still far more frequently over a period than you would normally find them.

I know the paragraph above doesn't make sense so I'll try to describe it here. Take, for example, XBox 360 games. These are pretty uncommon; before last April I had seen them maybe once or twice at sales. Starting in April, I started seeing them at maybe two or three sales per day every day we went out. They weren't that common but we were still finding them more frequently than  we normally would over a sustained period. We kept finding 360 games through May and June but in July they disappeared.

Another thing I've noticed regards searching for common items. I've recently been looking for a new computer monitor because the one I had was quickly dying. Monitors themselves are fairly common but I wanted a cheap widescreen one; I didn't want a square panel. What surprised me is how many monitors you do see at sales. I guess I never noticed until I started looking, but I've been seeing at least five or six monitors  every time I've gone saling the last few times. Unfortunately, until today, all the monitors I saw were square panels. I finally found a widescreen today, but I'll talk about that in my purchase summary I'll be posting directly after this. My point is that you tend to ignore the really common items you see to the point that you don't even realize how common they are.

The Woman I Hate

Last summer, I had a few garage sales selling some a lot of stuff I had gotten out of dumpsters during my university's move out (it was all working items in good condition, mostly appliances, electronics, and other household items). For my second sale, my mother volunteered me to try to sell some friends' garage sale leftovers which, to my dismay, consisted entirely of clothing and the like.

Much of this stuff was legitimate designer wear which shouldn't be at any garage sale, especially mine because I have no idea how much any of that stuff is worth. Most of the items were still priced from our friends' sale and I left the prices on as a guide for myself. Not surprisingly, nothing was selling because no one wants to spend $15 on a shirt at a garage sale.

The Woman I Hate showed up late in the day in a pickup truck with a man I assume was her husband. I guessed they bought items at garage sales to sell at swap meets because their truck was filled with household items and they had bought a bunch of cheap appliances at my last sale.

The Woman I Hate immediately started gathering up clothing until she had a fairly large pile for which she offered me $2. I laughed and told her that items were priced individually and there was no way she could possibly have all of that for $2 to which she got mad. The situation culminated in her telling me that the bag that was priced at $50 -- which I told her she could have for $12 -- was priced at fifty cents, not fifty dollars. At that, I told her she could leave and she wasn't buying anything.

I don't hate this woman because she tried to bargain with me; that would be very hypocritical on my part. Rather, I dislike her because she had the gall to try to rip me off like that. I now refuse to sell her anything whenever I see her at one of my garage sales because she always expects ridiculous bargains (for example, at my most recent sale, she tried to give my friend $3 for the crystal set he sold for $3 per stem). It doesn't bother me that she tries to bargain; it bothers me that she gets mad (to the point of shouting sometimes) when you don't accept her ludicrous offers.

Since my first negative experience with this person, I've started to see her a lot when I go garage saling. I estimate I see her at once two thirds of the days I go garage saling and many days I see her two or three times. She's always the same rude, terrible person to other sellers as she was to me.

The Item of the Day

On many garage saling days -- more often than not, I would say -- you will see an item that stands out as the item of the day. By this, I mean an item that keep appearing at different sales; sometimes you may see it as often as seven or eight times in the day.

The item of the day is usually an uncommon item (which is why it sticks out) and frequently is an item never before seen garage saling. For example, one of the first items I noticed as an item of the day was the original Playstation console: I saw at least six that day at different sales and I have only ever seen one since then. Other items I have noticed exhibiting this effect include Skip-a-Cross board games, plastic pineapples, Kafka textbooks, and toy pianos. Note that for an item to be considered an item of the day the items you see must be identical; for example, the Kafka texts were all the same discussion of his more noteworthy writings and a bunch of different books written by Kafka wouldn't count.

This effect, while interesting, doesn't really impact garage saling in any way. I just thought it was something interesting to write about. It sort of reminds me of the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon, but not really.

The Most Humorous Garage Sale I Have Ever Attended

After Friday's post, I decided to continue my theme of "things that make me laugh."  Today I will be discussing one seller's incredible naivety.

Back before I started garage saling seriously, at the height of the Beanie Baby craze, I happened to stop at a garage sale in my neighborhood with my parents.  These people were selling one item: Beanie Babies.  As in tables and tables full of them.  Apparently they had invested a fair amount of money into them (buying them on eBay, etc.) and suddenly realized they were short on money.  As in the thousands of dollars they spent on these animals.  

Even as a kid in elementary school, my mind was blown.  For adults to spend so much money on something that was clearly a fad was disturbing, especially since the demand was entirely artificial, constructed by the company to boost sales.  Really.

The worst part about this sale were the prices.  People were swarming the tables, trying to get a good deal on a "valuable" stuffed animal but they weren't buying anything.  Why?  Because the seller was pricing the Beanie Babies using the Beanie Baby collector's book she found at Borders.  She seriously expected to make, in some instances, $150 per stuffed animal.

Readers, if you have an item that you have been told has a certain value, don't try to sell it at your garage sale.  People come looking for bargains.  If you really think you have something worth money, sell it on eBay.  There you will get its fair value.