Garage Sale Mobile Tips

If you are holding a garage sale as a way of clearing up someone’s estate, you may be wondering if certain items that Grandfather used to own are antiques or not. If so, you don’t want to sell them off far too cheaply. Sure, your garage sale will make some dealer’s day, but you would probably prefer to get a fair price for the item – and your late grandfather would have preferred that too.

• War memorabilia such as uniforms, weapons, other paraphernalia and especially medals
• Old coins
• Jewellery – if you really want to literally sell the family silver
• Furniture, especially if it’s been old as long as you can remember. This is especially true of wooden furniture
• Fur coats or anything else made of fur. Make sure they’re not moth-eaten.
• Clothing that looks old-fashioned. The care label may give you an indication of the age, more or less – if there is a care label. 
• Odd old ornaments that you suspect may be antiques. They may not be, so don’t be over-optimistic.

Clothes are one of the items that crop up in yard sales all around the country every weekend. If you’re on the lookout for new clothing, then going garage sale hunting can be a great way to pick up some cheap threads in good condition that’s a lot of fun. 

• Garage sales don’t provide changing rooms for you to try on items. To make sure you buy clothes the right size, measure yourself before you go in centimetres and inches. Compare your measurements to the ones on the label – don’t just rely on the size listed in large numbers on the label. The label’s been cut off? Take a tape measure with you in your pocket and do a quick measure-up.
• Check each garment over to make sure that all the buttons are there, that the elastic in waistbands isn’t perished, and that the garment isn’t stained or full of holes. If the garment needs only minor repairs (e.g. a fallen hem or a missing button), try asking for a discount. If it has holes or perished elastic, forget it.
• If you’re handy at sewing, consider the possibilities of other items. A round table cloth can become a circle skirt, and a tent-shaped mu-mu dress has a lot of fabric that can be transformed into a new garment. Sheets also have possibilities. Another thing to remember is that greyish second-hand items can be dyed black or navy blue and given a new lease of life.
• Don’t buy second hand underwear from a garage sale. The exception is if it still has the tags on it and has never been worn.
• Wash everything as soon as you get it home! Hopefully, the seller has already done this, but you never know.

If you’re a student or some other young person setting up home for the first time, then garage sales are great! You can get most of the things you need really cheaply at garage sales. Who cares if they aren’t always the most up-to-date or the most fashionable? Some things never really pass their use-by dates and garage sales are excellent places to score these.

• A bed with a decent mattress – can be hard to find at garage sales, but you never know.
• Bedding to go on ditto. This is usually easier to pick up. Get pillows, sheets, pillow cases and blankets as the bare minimum, plus a cover of some sort.
• Cutlery: at least two knives, dessert spoons and forks for everybody in the household, plus four teaspoons.
• Crockery: a dinner plate, a bread-and-butter plate, two bowls and three mugs per person. Garage sales often have complete sets for sale, so keep an eye out for these.
• Glassware: two or three tumblers per person. Plastic cups are OK, but glass is classier.
• A table – and remember a tablecloth can cover a multitude of sins such as white circles, burn marks, chips, paint splashes and the like.
• Chairs – one per person, plus two more for guests. Again, garage sales often have these – usually a bit old and battered, but nothing a bit of paint won’t fix.
• Chests of drawers to put your odds and ends in.
• At least one clock.
• Mirrors
• Cooking stuff: at least three saucepans, a wooden spoon, two or three sharp knives, a salad bowl, a chopping board, a kettle, a mixing bowl and a cheese grater. Plus anything else you can think of.
• Towels and tea towels. You can never have too many!

YardSalers.net is an archive of newsletters related to garage sales, yard sales and EBay auctions. It is also a site that has a number of garage sale-related books (written by the site’s creator) and resources for sale, which subscribers can sell via an affiliate program. A lot of the site (and each newsletter) seems to be dedicated to those who comb through garage sales and online auctions to find items that can be re-sold at a profit, rather than those of us who go to garage sales for fun or to find household items on the cheap. Yardsalers.net seems to have a competition where subscribers can share their story about how they snaffled something really cheaply and then resold it for a huge amount.

So you’re new to the world of garage sales now that the economic pinch has sent you to explore new avenues for retail therapy, or finding gifts, furniture and the like. How do you go about scoring a bargain?

• Scan the lists of garage sales online and in the local newspapers. It’s best to find the ones closest to you so you don’t spend more than you save on fuel.
• Take plenty of cash with you! Needless to say (but I’ll say it anyway), garage sales are cash only.
• Get in early if you want bargains on really popular items. Most garage sales are over by midday. The best bargains are usually snapped up straight away.
• Dress correctly for the weather and don’t be put off by a cold wind or the like.
• You are allowed to haggle. But don’t be ridiculous about how low you can go.
• It’s only a bargain if you actually want it – the same rule that applies to retail store sales. Yes, the prices at garage sales are an absolute steal if you are used to seeing shop prices. But do you really need or want that stuffed moose head? 
• If you like shopping for fun, going late can have its advantages. While most of the really good bargains have gone, sellers may be willing to drop prices on some quirky or very common items (e.g. children’s toys, crockery, books) in an attempt to get rid of the things and get things over and done with.

If you’re the arts and crafts type of person, then garage sales are great to visit to pick up raw materials for your crafts as well as a place to get inspiration for craft ideas. This is particularly true if you like sewing and the like.

• Flannelette sheets: nice fluffy material for children’s pyjamas
• Cotton sheets: easily transformed into curtains (a hint for those who need curtains and haven’t found them in garage sales)
• Satin sheets: as long as they’re not pilled, use them for making lingerie.
• Tablecloths – lace trimmed tablecloths turn very easily into circle skirts.
• Enormous clothes made of gorgeous fabric but in a terrible style: unpick them at the seams and use the fabric.
• Woolly jumpers with frayed sleeves: unravel them then re-knit the wool into something new
• Terrible old 70s disco clothes in eyesearing colours: children’s dress-up items and fancy dress costumes. The same goes for costume jewellery, bizarre hats and gloves

If you’re holding a garage sale, don’t think for a moment that once the great day dawns that everything will be plain sailing, think again (conversely, if you think that the day of your sale is the hardest part about having a garage sale, you will also need to think again). Well, the day of your garage sale might be plain sailing (garage sailing?) but you will need to Be Prepared, as the Boy Scout motto has it.

Here are ten reasons why buying from garage sales is better than buying on Ebay.

1. You can inspect the item you want to buy for yourself. You aren’t buying a “pig in a poke” and running the risk of having an unscrupulous seller handing over something that isn’t the item they actually photographed.
2. You may be able to haggle the price down if it’s unreasonable.
3. You have less competition – you may be the only person to spot a particular bargain.
4. With garage sales, if you see something you want, you can buy it right away without having someone outbid you at the last minute.
5. You don’t have to stay glued to your computer screen or mobile to see if you’re still winning the auction.
6. If you’re the first person to see something great, you are the one who gets it. 
7. You don’t have to pay extra for shipping costs. You pick it up and you go. And you don’t have to wait for ages while something’s shipped from the other end of the country.
8. You get to meet people in your local community.
9. You don’t have to have internet access to buy at a garage sale. Nor do you need to remember login details and passwords.
10. You don’t have to negotiate a good time that suits both of you to view an item.

Garage sales get all sorts coming through to pick up a bargain. This can be part of the fun – you get to meet new people in your neighbourhood. But you also get the rip-off artists who make a habit of stealing from garage sales.

• Don’t get distracted when you’re paying. Make sure you keep the note they gave you in sight while you get the change so you can’t give them change for a $10 only to have them say that they handed you a $20.
• Watch out for people who open boxes to make sure that they actually put the item back in again.
• Beware of price tag switchers. These people will engage you in conversation or distract you by bringing along a fidgety child and waiting until your eyes are elsewhere and then switch tags.
• Some con artists will try to “help” you by adding up the price of several items they are buying… which is always short of the real total. Make up some excuse for checking each item (e.g. “I’ve got to tick these items off because I’m selling some things for my friend and I don’t want to rip him/her off.”). Use the line about the “friend” if you don’t want to lie (e.g. if you are running a church garage sale!) – your other half or your child is the “friend” you’re referring to.

Congratulations if you’re expecting a new baby. If this is your first child and you’ve been to antenatal classes, you have probably been confronted by one of those lists of “what your new baby will need”. This is usually followed by looking through a few department store lists and boggling at the price of everything. This new baby’s going to cost how much?

• baby baths
• potties
• clothing of all types, shapes and sizes – don’t buy too many “newborn” sizes, as babies grow like mushrooms.
• back packs and front packs
• soft toys
• buggies, prams and strollers
• high chairs

• car safety seats
• bottles
• dummies
• cot mattresses – the jury’s still out as to whether fumes from old mattresses causes “cot death”.