Yard sale season is officially underneath manner. Last weekend we went to five earnings, all within a mile of our house, and we exceeded numerous extra in the vehicle that we didn't have time to prevent for. Our haul become pretty modest (a brand new backpack for Brian and a couple of gadgets for our nieces), however the revel in became but instructional. Specifically, it helped verify our long-held notion that there are two predominant styles of yard income: the Clearout Sale and the Revenue Sale.
The Clearout Sale might be towards most human beings's concept of a conventional outdoor sale. Basically, it's held via the usage of someone with a house complete of junk they want to eliminate. They may additionally desire to elevate a piece of more money, however their major reason is to clean out unwanted stuff. At our subsequent-door neighbor's sale closing Saturday, for instance, there had been at least 1/2 a dozen propane camp lanterns that she stated that they had provided all through Superstorm Sandy after which, reputedly, in no manner had event to use once more. Likewise, there were piles of everything from baseballs to backpacks belonging to her teenage son, who was now off to college and unable to take the whole lot with him.
Most of the things you discover at a Clearout Sale may be priced to sell, because of this that that this form of sale is the first-rate place to locate in reality huge deals. (Ay our neighbor's sale, we positioned a Wenger SwissGear pc backpack, much like fashions which might be priced round $90 new, with the tags nevertheless on it, for $five.) However, the selection at Clearout Sales may be very hit-and-leave out. Some of them are first-class examples of the announcing,
The other major type of yard sale, the Revenue Sale, is a serious attempt to raise money. This type of sale is where you're most likely to find truly high-quality goods like antique furniture, rare books, or musical instruments. However, you're not that likely to get great deals on any of them. Because the objective is to maximize profits, most sellers would rather not sell an item at all than sell it for less than they think it's worth. So while you might be able to buy, say, an antique table at one of these sales for less than you'd pay in an antique shop, you won't pay any less for it than an antique dealer who was buying it to resell. In fact, it's quite likely that you'll pay more, since the seller's whole reason for holding a yard sale rather than just selling to an antique dealer is probably to get a better price. Sellers at Revenue Sales have typically checked the prices of items like theirs in stores or on eBay, and they will often make a point of telling you that the same chair they're selling for $150 goes for $200 elsewhere. But if you're just looking for something sturdy and comfortable to sit on, and you were hoping to pay around $15 for it, the Revenue Sale is not the place to look.
In general, then, the Clearout Sale offers better prices, while the Revenue Sale offers better quality. However, there is one particular subset of the Revenue Sale that actually tends to have more junk, and at worse prices, than the typical Clearout Sale. The best name I've managed to think up for this type of sale is a Reliquidation Sale: the seller has apparently bought up or otherwise acquired a pile of items liquidated by someone else who couldn't manage to sell them and is now attempting to sell them for a profit. Thus, this type of sale combines the worst aspects of the Clearout Sale and the Revenue Sale: there's nothing there but junk,and it's all overpriced.
Fortunately, Reliquidation Sales are usually easy to identify at a glance. Instead of the usual motley assortment of goods you'll find at a Clearout or Revenue sale, they have piles and piles of identical items, all of low value. You might find cosmetics, toiletries, flimsy plastic toys, coloring books—all small, cheap items, all priced just barely below what you'd pay for them in a store (assuming you'd be willing to pay for them in a store at all). So when you're out cruising the sales and you spot a table laden with a hundred identical pairs of cheap sunglasses, you know instantly that there's no point in slowing down to check it out.
Unfortunately, by the time you actually see the merchandise, you may have already walked a mile or more, or driven several blocks out of your way, to get to the yard sale you saw advertised on a sign. However, it's sometimes possible to avoid this kind of disappointment by remembering another common feature of Reliquidation Sales: like weeds, they tend to keep popping up week after week. Because the seller doesn't really have anything worth buying, they'll often end up with a lot of unsold merchandise at the end of the day—but because they're hoping to make money, they're not willing to just throw it out. So they pack it all up, bring it inside, and set it out again the next weekend, and the weekend after that, and sometimes every weekend after that until the weather gets cold. At this point, it's no longer so much a yard sale as a dollar store with a very limited selection set up on folding tables in someone's back yard.
So when you see a sign advertising a sale at the same address where you're pretty sure you went to one just last week, or the week before that, it's a good bet that there's no point in making the trip again. Because yard-saling is just like scuba diving; you can't afford to waste your oxygen swimming around some dumb submerged car.
