Going to garage sales last week was a lot like going to a FOL or AAUW book sale. It seemed like everywhere I looked there were books.
Thursday there were 16 garage sales in Grand Forks and the only thing I bought were books. Friday wasn’t much different. There were 29 fresh garage sale and I spent $59.50 for books and only $8.00 for anything else. The 26 fresh sales on Saturday did produce quite a few non-book items, but there were still books to be looked at and purchased.
The second sale I stopped at on Friday turned into a book buyer’s bonanza. The ad said nothing about books but when I stopped to look at a box of teacher’s aids, the lady running the sale asked if I was interested in books. When I told her ‘yes”, she told me the back patio was filled with books.
The patio was filled with tables stacked with boxes of books and there were more boxes under the tables. The first box I looked in produced a complete set of Lauraine Snelling’s Red River Of the North. Since nothing was priced, I went back to the garage and asked “what are you asking for the books”? Her response - “they are all ten cents each.”
I have no idea where they came from, but an hour and a half later I paid the lady $38.20 and started hauling box after box containing 382 books to my vehicle and then made a trip home to unload them into the garage before continuing one.
There was everything from a few current college textbooks to religious motivational fiction, to history, to children’s books, and everything in between. A few of them were listed on Amazon over the weekend and a few of them start later today on eBay, but most will stay in the garage until this winter when things slow down some before being gone through and listed.
In the end, this sale is a perfect example of why it’s important not to pre-judge a garage sale by what the ad says. Over the years, some of my best finds have been at sales many people wouldn’t have bothered stopping at based just on the ad or what the sale itself looked like from the end of the driveway.
Photograph by David Weekly.
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August 26th, 2008 at 12:07 am
Hi Gary,
I had a similar experience at a garage this weekend. I almost skipped 2 garage sales that from the road looked pretty bad - in a run down area of town in very run-down looking homes.
There were 2 driveways that were side-by-side and each were having a sale. The first one I looked at confirmed my impression - it was pure junk, priced very high. The driveway next door looked similar, with stuff spread out over 2 rickety tables and piled on a rusting lawn chair, but I thought I should at least take a closer look before leaving, since I was already there. It turned out that the seller was selling all of her late mother’s “collectibles” and everything was 25 cents each. I spent $28.00 on 25 cent items. Just about everything was grimy and dirty, and a few other people stopped, gave her stuff a quick glance and turned around and left without buying a thing. Now I am just getting into the eBay selling thing, so I was hoping as I was picking things out that I was making good decisions, but I figured at .25 each, I didn’t have to be too choosy. I just decided to buy anything that looked interesting and bring it all home and look items up as a learning experience. It turns out that about half of the things I picked up are selling for between 10 and 20 dollars on eBay! One set of salt and pepper shakers with a matching bell and sugar or jam pot I did not find on eBay, but did find it on replacements.com and they show the salt and pepper shaker set as worth $89.00! I don’t know yet how to compare prices on eBay with what I find on a site like replacements.com, so it will be interesting to see how it compares.
Thanks again for sharing your insights and experience! I look forward to reading every new entry you write! (Missed you last week)