The Mother of All Yard Sales

by Jim Washburn

Wanna have a yard sale? You’ve come to the right place. I’ve been to thousands and have held a few. The former is far easier; all you have to do is show up and buy things. Having a yard sale requires as much planning as invading Afghanistan, except the Taliban’s in your garage. Don’t worry, you can sell them to the CIA.

We’re moving at the end of month, so we’re having the Mother of All Yard Sales this coming Saturday, July 18. C’mon over.

Everyone thinks their garage or yard sale is the mother of all. It’s as if there’s some municipal code requiring the word “huge” to be used on every sign. You follow those signs for half a mile, only to find a driveway with two baby bibs and a warped copy of Frampton Comes Alive.

That won’t be a case here. The reason we’re having a yard sale instead of a garage sale is you can’t really get into our garage; the door hasn’t been open in years. There are narrow pathways through the mass, like someone had shoveled through a snowdrift. I’ve filled our back patio with stuff I’ve pulled out to sell, and it’s barely made a dent in the mass. I mentioned a couple of weeks back that there’s a 5' German vacuum tube stereo console in the garage. I’ve been digging out there ever since, and I haven’t seen it yet. It’s pretty, too, I recollect, a Grundig with contrasting panels of mahogany and flamed maple.

The house we’re moving to is wonderful in most respects, but it lacks a garage, so it’s going to be tough moving much of this stuff into the new house without it seeming to the neighbors that we’ve opened a huge can of Instant Crazy People.

I’ve been riffing on the mess in my garage for decades. I’m practically the Yakov Smirnoff of garage. It’s going to be hard letting go of that trove of material. But, since you can’t fit a 16-ounce drink in a 12-ounce can, as much of the stuff as is prudent, and then some, will be out on our lawn and driveway come Saturday.

What should you sell at a garage/yard sale? Anything. The more useless and incomprehensible something is, the better its chance of selling. The last yard sale we had, three years ago, dumb stuff like acrylic fruit was selling, while a vintage 1950s hi-fi speaker cab went unsold for $50. So I pulled the speakers and crossover out and sold them on eBay for $472. The lesson here is you can sell nearly anything for more on eBay if you have the time, which we don’t. Some stuff’s just too numerous, cumbersome or low-valued to bother with. Put it on the lawn.

To advertise your sale you should at minimum have an ad on Craigslist, with some of your cooler categories of stuff listed (other good ad spots, in descending order, include the Recycler, the Pennysaver, and your local paper, if you still have one). You’ll find an ad example below, one that, oddly enough, points you right at our front yard. Plus, staple-gun at least a dozen signs up at the ends of your block and at the more-traveled intersections in the neighborhood. Be sure to include arrows pointing the way, your address in large letters, and the word “huge.”

Some people have three-day long, Fri-Sat-Sun yard sales. On Fridays you’ll get  professional resellers going through your stuff, to put in their shops, swap meet stalls, or eBay stores. On Sundays, you get an after-church clientele. I say skip those and just do Saturday, when most people are out. Advertise a start time of 8 am, but plan on knocks on your door as early as 6 am from people looking to get first grabs on stuff. Be firm about sending them on their way. It’s impossible to get set up with them rooting through everything. Some people are pushy because it works for them often enough to pay off.

(When I was a wee lad, I advertised used guitars in the L.A. Times classifieds. There was one guy who’d pick up the early edition of the Sunday Times at the pressing plant before dawn on Saturday mornings. Around 5:45 am, he’d start calling. He’d wake me, and my parents, only to ask if I had any better guitars than the ones in the ad. Obnoxious as hell, but it must have been effective: the caller was Norm Harris, who went on to become the West Coast’s premier vintage guitar dealer.)

People will continue showing up early, so it’s imperative on the morning of your sale that you have helpers, to deal with or fend off the earybirds, and to hang out with as the morning wears. You should have donuts, snack foods, coffee and alcohol for them. Sausages on the BBQ are a nice touch. Having sated, liquored-up friends there lends a festive atmosphere to the day, where buyers will pull up unsure whether your junk-strewn lawn indicates a yard sale or a lifestyle.

Another upside to having friends there is that they may want some of your stuff. Give it to them or discount it: then you can go to their house if you want to se it again. There’s a downside, too, in that there may be hurt feelings if one of the things on your 50-cent table was their wedding present to you. That’s why margaritas were invented. Hand one to your friend.

Underneath this fabric of glee, you must have military organization. Have shade, something you can move as the sun does. Have plenty of change: quarters, $1s, $5s, $10s and $20s. Have bags. Have everything priced in advance, ideally with all the cheaper items divvied up on blankets marked 25-cents or whatever. Have things discretely marked, with a colored dot sticker or somesuch, so the pricing doesn’t get confused. On more expensive items, already have it clear in your mind just how much lower than the asking price you’re willing to go. That avoids dithering or being cajoled into a deal you don’t want to make.

Like Halloween, the garage sale tradition is largely being kept alive by Mexican immigrants, so if you speak Spanish or have a friend there who does, it’s helpful. I also have veteran yard sale friends who insist there’s a “rule of three” involved in most transactions with persons of Latin origin: they’ll make an offer; you make a counter-offer; they riposte; you parry; they make a final offer; you make yours and only then might the sale be completed. I have no idea if this is true. If so, it’s more pleasant than any stereotype I could come up with for dealing with persons of Germanic origin, which would necessarily involve a “rule of one” and a Panzer tank.

Some people put a closing time in their ads. I’d recommend playing it by ear instead. In the summertime, your sales will probably have died off by 1 pm. If you’re hardy and there’s beer in the cooler, you can push on til 3.

You will probably have plenty of unsold stuff, so have a plan for what to do with it. If you can still drive, head to the used CD shops, furniture stores and such, though you can save time and feel good by donating it all at the Goodwill or similar. Beware though: Last year my wife was on me to get rid of a bunch of my dad’s old books, so I donated them a to charity store she likes to frequent. A few weeks later she came home from there having bought a small pile of books she thought I’d like. You can pretty well guess where they’d come from.

Here’s what our Craigslist ad will look like:
Hulking yard sale: Furniture, records, CDs, guitars, amps, musical gear, hi-fi, books, art, clothing,
housewares—32 years of stuff! Rose Ln. (at Orange Ave.), Costa Mesa. Sat, July 18, 8 a.m.

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