Monday, May 07, 2007

Lessons From A Yard Sale

This past weekend was the big county wide yardsale and so Jennifer and I took advantage of the hype and had a big sale at the 408. Here are a few of the lessons I learned:
  1. The early bird as well as the later comer catche the best deals - we had worked until midnight on Friday pricing things and planned on finishing up early Saturday and opening our sale by 8am. Huh! We had people at our door at 7:30am. But but days end I was just wanting to rid of stuff and would practically give it away. I think I sold a nice sofa chair for like $5.
  2. If you're thinking about it, grab it - At 15 minutes before 8am I had a dad try to talk me down on my golf clubs. He said, "Would you take $10." I nicely told him that it was too early to drop my price and that I had a couple of people coming later in the day to look at the clubs. I saw him ask his son if he wanted to pay the $15 price and the boy shrugged his shoulders like, "I don't know pops." As the father and son were he-hawing around, my friend Keith swooped in and took the clubs to the cash register. Woops! The aggresive seem to prevail at yard sales.
  3. One man's junk is another man's treasure - I laughed as I watched people pay me money for things I hated and had been collecting dust. Midway through the sale I remembered I had a baby rocker in the back of the garage. I quickly pulled it out, knocked off the cob webs and had it sold before I even had time to put a price tag on the item.
  4. Never trust the weather man - They had been calling for thunder storms all weekend and we had been praying for decent weather. It was important to have the sale. I needed to declutter before the move and I could use the money. God was awesome and provided a nice overcast day with tons of shoppers.
  5. Yard sales are exhausting - Like I said, we worked late into the night on Friday pricing and getting things ready, got up at 6am and went strong until 2pm. I think I hit the sack before 10pm for the first time in who knows when. I was beat!
  6. I love people - It was fun to see the diverse crowd float in and out of my sale. I enjoyed talking to the majority and even got the chance to walk some potential buyers through my home. I like to call it Yard Sale Evangelism.

I'm hoping Floyd County has an annual community yard sale. I think Jennifer and I make a good team:)

4 comments:

Sandi said...

Oh Gosh! I do hope you got GOOD $ FOR THE BABY ROCKER!!!!!!!!! I now have to figure out how to sell on ebay for all my garage sale "just had to haves". Hope you and Jennifer did well. Aunt Sandi

Anonymous said...

Just to let you know, Kristen pulled that 9 iron out Monday night in her first scramble and having watching 6 20-somethings or older miss the green from a 100 yards out, she calmly stepped up there and put it 15 feet from the hole.

I think the 9 iron said something to the effect NO ONE had ever swung it so well. :)

Anonymous said...

Hey Chad now that the yard sale is over could you and Jennifer pray for rain? The cistern's 'bout empty!!!

Anonymous said...

Have to let you know that with that driver, I drove the Par 4 at Kincaid in the Fore! Him Church Scramble league.

Kristen made the 10 foot putt off of the drive.

My daughter and I combined for an eagle.

If you would have known that I would team with my daughter for an eagle, you could have gotten $100 out of me for the driver alone. :)