*aimkins* and anyone else - garage sale tips?

sjb&apa

Some friends and I are having a garage sale at my house next weekend during the Rosemount city-wide sale. I haven't had a garage sale as an adult, but my mom used to do them when I was a kid.

Any tips?

A couple of people contributing to our sale have baby/kid clothes. What's the best way to display them? Folded on a table? Hung up on hangers? If hanging is better, what did you hang things on?

I'm thinking of using colored price stickers and having each person price all their things with the same color sticker so we can track how much money each person has earned. Does that make sense? Like, all my stuff would have green price stickers, while other people's stuff was in all yellow or all red?

How much change should I get from the bank in coins and small bills? I want to price everything in increments of 25 cents so I only need to get quarters and paper money to have on hand for change. I don't want to deal with 10-cent or 40-cent  or $1.60 items, is it reasonable to just round to the nearest quarter?

All of us who are contributing items to the sale will be donating our "earnings" to charity - we're not doing this to make money for ourselves, we just thought it would be fun and a good motivation to purge our homes of unused stuff. Each person will give her money to a charity she supports, so the money isn't all going to the same place. Should we advertise that the proceeds are going to charity and list the charities we're donating to, or does that not matter?

Any tips on sign placement to direct people to the house? How far away should we start putting up signs? Is just the address enough info for the signs, or should we put hours that the sale is open too?

Any other tips/ideas to share?

aimkins

I love your idea for doing it for a charity. It's a win-win situation

As far as signs, we live near a 'landmark' in our town. So, on signs, to make it easy, we just put "off of "street avenue" across from the "city park"" and people who are familiar with the town know where that is. We put them on neighboring streets but we didn't go crazy with advertising since we advertised in a couple of other ways too. We also put hours to the sale.

(You can get posterboard 2/$1 at Dollar Tree stores. They also have plastic signs that actually say Garage Sale, which is what we got this year. Last year we did posterboard and I'd actually prefer that. The plastic signs are flimsy and small, once you put them in the ground, it's kind of hard to see.)

Look into putting an ad in your paper. Ours was $25 for 25 words. We didn't have to pay for our ad, our HOA did, but I think that helps. A couple people that have come mentioned the ad in the paper. We also put flyers that we made at the local small-town grocery store. People have mentioned that as well.

Yes, quarter increments are nice! I started doing that last year and am so glad that I did! No worrying about adding up dimes, nickles etc. It's easy math.

People are going to barter with you on price a lot more than you think they will. I have had more people ask "Will you take ___ for this instead" So, I kept that in mind when pricing.

If you can, group things together on tables. This may be common sense but we weren't able to get as many tables this year as we did last year and I don't like that we weren't able to get things grouped together as much as we'd like. We have houseware stuff with clothing and kitchen stuff with office stuff. It works, but maybe it's just my Type A personality that wants it all together.

We haven't sold many clothes. My Sister gave us a bunch of her old shorts, tank tops and stuff and we've sold one pair of shorts for .25c.

Have a rain plan! If you noticed my post from yesterday, we didn't and it really caught us off guard.

As far as change, I got $100 change to start. I think I got $15 in ones, $5 in quarters (because of my pricing in .25c increments), $40 in fives and $40 in tens.

Today, we had someone purchase $120 (yes, really) in items and she gave us two $100 bills. I freaked out. I couldn't find my counterfeit marker (bought for last year's sale). DH was on his way to head to the bank when she got here, so I asked him to wait and then sent him to the bank to get smaller bills for the $200. Luckily, they were legit, and when we looked at them, they looked very real. As she was pulling away, I quickly thought to write down her license plate and vehicle description. It's illegal to pass counterfeit bills so if they were not legit, we'd call the police. You hate to assume that people will screw you over, but it's very possible.

After that, we made a few signs that said "no bills larger than $20". My DH is selling a fish house for $200 so we will likely offer to hold it for them until they go to the bank or something. We haven't had any hits on it yet so I'm not too worried about having to deal with that.

My Mom saved us some of her plastic grocery bags to use for customers who buy a lot. Or you could use boxes, if you have old shoe boxes or anything?

If you have electronics for sale, plug them in if you can, to show that they work.

Since you're having the sale to benefit charity, I'd mention that on the signs and/or in your ad "proceeds to benefit 'abc' & 'xyz'" Maybe even have a donation jar out?

I read this somewhere ... be prepared for people (mostly kids) to steal stuff. Especially if you have kid toys out. People will often leave their kids free to come check stuff out and then go back in the car. Last year, we had a little boy do just that... browsed through stuff and then went to the car. I caught him as his Mom was talking to me and so I politely asked "do you want that too?" and that initiated her to either pay for it or have him put it back (i don't remember).

That is about all I can think of. It's been a little boring today. I'm glad my DH is here to hang out with. I've also been on the laptop periodically when it's not been busy.

Hope that helps! Good Luck

 

sjb&apa

Thanks for the ideas!

I know adult clothes don't sell well at garage sales, but kids' clothes seem to be more popular, and we do have some kid items from 2 of my friends who are participating. We thought we might put out some adult clothes that are in nearly-new condition, but mark them all really cheap (like 25c for any adult clothing item). Whatever doesn't sell will get donated.

I hadn't even thought of counterfeit bills, that's a good call!

I've heard that people steal from garage sales. I can't imagine why someone would feel the need to steal cheap secondhand stuff, but I guess they do. We'll keep our eyes open. 

We will have our sale listed in the city-wide sale guide, so that should help people find us. I was going to put an ad on craigslist too. I'm not sure if it would be worth it to pay for an ad in the local paper. None of us are selling any "big ticket" items (like your $200 fish house), so I feel like a $25 ad will eat up too much of our earnings and that means less money to donate to charity. I'm not sure if it would bring enough people to the sale to make it worthwhile.

I have so much work to do this weekend to get ready! 

dmblack

Baby/kids clothes work if they are folded according to size on tables.  I personally hate digging through things in bins.  I would hang some of the nicer things to display.  Also, price things in 25 cent increments.  Adult clothes sell as long as they are marked cheap enough.  I sold a lot of my maternity wear last year but I had things marked very cheap.  Be prepared to have people make offers on things.  and don't over price.  I walked out of a lot of sales last weekend because people had things way over-priced and were not willing to even deal. 

As far as advertising. I used Craigslist last year to advertise my sale.  This worked out well as I had people stop looking for specific items I had listed in my ad.

If you are going to donate to charities be sure to let people know.  I think this is a wonderful way to purge and support others.