Basically, the brainchild of the Chamber of Commerce as a way to generate traffic for the restaurants on Main, it's absolutely fabulous for all involved.
No need to try and drum up traffic, because every junk yard dog, pack rat, collector, and bargain hunter in a 100 mile radius pours into town for this. Easily one in ten houses put on at least something of a sale. Lots of stuff for the customers to pick over, and lots of customers to buy your junk if you chose to participate.
Last year, I sold a pickup that wasn't even for sale.
This year, I found a good home for the digital piano. It's a nice one, and the lady got herself a bona fide bargain. But I can't justify keeping it when it almost never gets played. It's too nice to put upstairs and let it get destroyed by Mo's occasional inspirations. And locked in my den, Em has played it about three times a year.
When I bought it, I had the notion that Em would be required to take piano lessons all the way through high school. After a year of battling her about practicing and so on, I realized that I was spending $70 a month to alienate her both from her father and from any love of music she might possess.
But because I was thinking long term, when I bought it, I insisted on touch sensitive, weighted keys; on three pedals like a real piano has; on the full 88 keys. I got it on sale at Mars and I did pretty well as far as it went, but it was still a lot of money. I could have easily gotten a used spinet for the money, but that would have to be tuned.
I was so confident that this was a 'forever' purchase that I didn't keep the packing materials that would have made it possible to eBay the sucker.
I wanted to get a little more for it than I did, but not badly enough to cart it back into the den and try again next year.
I sold a few other things, and people are funny.
I had this kitchen playset thing out. A guy was looking at it and asked how much, and I said, '$7, which I believe is priced to move.'
'I don't have a problem giving you $7 for it, but my car is full. We'll come back on the next trip, after we unload.'
So he goes and gets in his car and it sits there for a minute. His wife comes out, comes down and looks at the thing for herself. Then she asks me if I'd take $5 for it.
Like $5 is a deal, but at $7, well, I was just trying to rip people off.
I could almost hear the domestic dispute as they drove away with it, 'You don't know how to dicker!' 'Yeah? He'd have come down to $4 if we'd left and come back.' 'Don't give me that look, these things cost $60 new, it'd be gone by the time we got back!'
Then I took Mo with me to a couple of garage sales, bought some clothes I think will fit her. Clothes, I could tell, that were last worn by a thirty-something woman who was on what couldn't possibly be her first margarita of the day. But she was about the same size as Mo, and when you can get designer clothes for 50¢ a garment, I just wished she'd had more stuff on the table.
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