Why We Go To Garage Sales

Every Thursday we read the local rag which has the local yard sale listings and the Twin Falls newspaper which covers the general area. Thus armed, we take off Friday morning and visit yard sales within about a 20 miles radius. We do the same thing on Saturday.

Damn the high gasoline prices, full speed ahead! Sometimes we wonder from Hagerman to Twin Falls.

Why do we do this?

Because we live in a small Idaho town where the closest thing to finding something interesting to do is to go to the town park and watch the kids try to kill themselves on their skateboards.

Actually, we got into the yard-sale habit in Payson Arizona where we lived for six years after I retired. Payson was almost as interesting as our Idaho town.

In Payson, I mainly purchased books. I had about 6000 when I left there. I was selling them on the Internet at Amazon.com and at Alibris.com.

I “sold” the business when I left Arizona and, because I’m too lazy, I have not started the business again in Idaho. (I’ve switched to direct mail where I make what is called “very little” or “indecent” money.) However, we still have a garage full of other stuff we bought at Arizona garage sales.

So, what do we get by going to yard sales? Nothing much, but here is my list:

1. My wife can find a doll to go with her other zillion dolls. She can buy clothing for her dolls too. She can chat about the dolls with the other garage-salers.

2. She also can do the same thing with the cuddly little bears.

3. I can look for tiny birds to put into the 6-foot tall bird cage I bought at another yard sale. The cage came in a fairly small box. The instructions were in some language of the Far East. I think the thing may have come from India. There were some instructions but I had to look at the pictures because I don’t read Far East English. Well, I had the thing together in no time at all (about a zillion hours). It turned out to be a real bird cage. I thought the cage would hold a lot of bird poop so I decided on phony birds (which are not that easy to find).

4. I can buy little items to put with my South American collection which is on a long table in our foyer. There are some wood carvings I bought in South America plus some gifts and some other carvings I’ve purchased here and there. I tried to find a suitable cloth for my long foyer table. I ended up buying it at Target® on the Internet (they let me use my Amazon account).

5. I also can buy wooden animal carvings which I like. To this I might add that we buy anything we think is cute.

6. I buy some tools, which I will never use and other odds and ends that I also have no use for. These will be sold at our future yard sale when we hope to clear enough junk out of our garage so that we can actually get at least one car in there. (Did I tell you about the great “authentic” English pub dart set and target we got at a farm a couple of weeks ago for under $25.00? I place it right up there with the $300.00 Mah Jong set we got in Arizona.)

7. The main reason we go yard sale-ing is to chat with strangers, many of which have become friends. Also, it is a great place to practice my Spanish. Yard sales is where the local immigrants purchase clothing for their kids and anything that looks like it could be sold on EBay.

We are not what are called “early birds.” They are the ones who want to get ahead of everybody else. They are usually sellers. Some of these have a perpetual yard sale in their front yard. Others sell on EBay. Still others just like to buy stuff before anyone else can get their mitts on it.

The early birds are not of our social class. They are the untouchables because they’ve gone before we ever get there.

Some sellers actually cater to them! Can you believe it?

P.S. We’ve heard that if you go to a yard sale up in Sun Valley that you can get a pair of $250,00 fine leather men’s shoes for $1.00. We haven’t made it up that far yet but we would only pay $0.50. We never pay full price.

John T. Jones, Ph.D. (tjbooks@hotmail.com), a retired VP of R&D for Lenox China, is author of detective & western novels, nonfiction (business, scientific, engineering, humor), poetry, etc. Former editor of Ceramic Industry Magazine. He is Executive Representative of IWS sellers of Tyler Hicks wealth-success books and kits. He also sells TopFlight flagpoles. He calls himself "Taylor Jones, the hack writer."

More info: http://www.tjbooks.com

Business web site: http://www.aaaflagpoles.com