Garage Sale Selling 101

While I was visiting my family in Arizona, I helped my sister have a garage sale in preparation for her move to Texas (yipee!!!).

She was more than ecstatic when I volunteered to help her. To say she was not looking forward to organizing and working this garage sale would be a huge understatement.

So it got me to thinking, maybe some of you are intimidated or scared about having a garage sale of your own. So I thought I’d share my Garage Sale Selling Wisdom with you all. I’ve been a garage sale seller many times and a garage sale buyer hundreds of times. These are some of the things I have learned along the way.

1) Pricing

Price to sell, not to make money. This is a garage sale, after all.

And be prepared that your house will probably be a total wreck while you’re pricing everything before the sale. Here’s what my parent’s living room looked like for days while I priced all of my sister’s stuff.

2) Signs

Location, location, location. If you don’t have good signs (arrows, address) at every major intersection and at every intersection leading them to your house, they won’t be able to find your sale.

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3) Advertising

Did you know that Craigslist has a “Garage Sale” section. FREE advertising, folks! You should also look into advertising with your local paper. You might be surprised at how affordable it is. You also may be able to chose to advertise in either the print or the online section or both.

4) Day of the Week and Time of the Day

I have my garage sales on Saturday only. Sure, you might make more money if you have it Friday, Saturday and Sunday but man, that’s a whip! I prefer not to lose an entire weekend to my garage sale. And I usually start setting up at 7a, but be aware that you might have early birds. You can say “no early birds” in your advertising, but they’ll still come.

5) Display

Think of your garage sale as your storefront. If it’s an appealing display, people are more likely to buy. Don’t just throw it all out there on a table and expect people to dig through your junk (some people will, but not everyone).

See our book “section” and our game “section”. On the blankets we have our electronic “section” and behind that is our linens “section”. See how easy that would be to shop?

6) Haggling

Please don’t haggle over 50 cents. And cut people a good deal if they’re buying several items. Again, this is a garage sale.

7) Change

Make sure you have some!

8) Donation Pick Up

Call around to some local churches or donation centers to see if they’ll come pick up all of the stuff that you don’t sell. We closed up our sale around 2p, the guy from the church came and loaded up all of our unsold stuff (and gave us a donation receipt), and we had our feet up, counting our money by 4p.

9) Sunscreen

Don’t forget it, or you’ll be sorry…trust me!

Do you have any tips to add to the list? Is there anything that drives you crazy as a buyer? My biggest pet peeves is poor signs! What’s yours?

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