This coming Saturday, the convention center in Grand Forks is holding the 1st Annual Anything Goes Garage Sale, Flea Market, Swap Meet in it’s main arena/convention area.

They had originally hoped to attract 200 people to set up. They stopped taking registrations several weeks ago when 347 people had registered because they ran out of room to put them.

I’m wondering how many hundreds of people will be waiting in line at 8 am Saturday morning when they open the doors to the public. Will there be some people who will actually camp outside the entrance Friday night so they can be one of the first few in line?

It should be an interesting event and it will also be interesting to see how it affects the general garage sale situation in town both this weekend and for the rest of the summer.

Normally this time of year there would likely be between fifty and sixty fresh sales starting this weekend, so it will be interesting to see how many people want to compete with this sale. It will also be interesting to see if that many people taking part in the event will dramatically decrease the number of sales we see throughout the remainder of the summer.

Popularity: 70% [?]

The auctions for the third week of the 2009 Garage Sale Challenge ended Sunday night with only 11 of the 29 qualifying items selling for a sell through rate of a dismal 38%. While that is better than last week’s 29%, it’s still far below the 65% to 80% I’m accustomed to. I can’t remember ever having two weeks in a row this low before.

Part of the problem may have been that the auctions all ended on Sunday evening which was right in the middle of the 3-day Memorial Day weekend. Previously I’ve always with 3-day holiday weekends I’ve always ended my auctions on Monday evening but, I forgot that Memorial Day was early this year and the auctions were live before I realized it.

All the vintage Avalon Hill and 3M board games sold, but If it weren’t for them the week would have been a total disaster. The only auction that cracked the $50 barrier was a lot of four Avalon Hill war theme games that sold for $51.

Here’s how things look at the end of the third week of the Challenge.

Popularity: 74% [?]

You may not have noticed, but vampires are enjoying a resurgence in popularity. And not just among young people. A growing number of adults, particularly women, are fascinated with them.

That fascination has spilled over into the publishing field in the form of several series of novels by a number of authors. Many of these series sell quite well when offered on eBay.

For some ideas regarding what authors and series to look for, check out Vampires - Throw Away The Garlic And Welcome Them Into Your Home over at The 2009 Garage Sale Challenge blog. Be sure to read the comments also.

Photograph by Annafur.

Popularity: 73% [?]

The auctions for the second week of this year’s Garage Sale Challenge ended Sunday night with only 13 of the 45 qualifying items selling for a sell through rate of a dismal 29%. Neither the Meiwa Art Christmas dinnerware nor the Holmes & Edwards flatware attracted much attention at all. Since those two things made up more than half of the total listings, they pretty much killed my sell through rate.

None of the auction items cracked the $50 barrier. The highest priced item brought was the lot of 26 Quiltmaker magazines that brought $29.51. Helping my total sales out were three fixed price listings that sold during the week. Two romance paperback lots for $39.99 each and a lot of 4 Krystonian series books for $29.99.

Here’s how things look at the end of the second week of the Challenge.

The $17.67 that appears under Incidental Fees is my out-of-pocket postage cost since I had listed the three fixed price items that sold as “Free Shipping”.

Here are my Challenge purchases made during the week.
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Popularity: 35% [?]

An experienced garage sale shopper/flea market seller walks into a moving sale in an older neighborhood of Grand Forks last Saturday.

One of the first things he spots is an old John Deere pedal tractor from the 1950s sitting in one corner of the garage. He walks over and looks at the price tag - $200. He estimates he could make between $100 and $150 profit on it.

Now the thought process begins. He only has a limited amount of cash for the day and paying $200 for the tractor would mean he’d pretty much be headed home for the day right after the purchase.

While he’s considering buying the pedal tractor, he starts looking around and finds several other things he’d like to buy all priced considerably less than the tractor. He opts for several other purchases that come to a total of roughly $90.
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Popularity: 32% [?]

The auctions for the first week of this year’s Garage Sale Challenge ended Sunday night with 23 of the 30 qualifying items sold for a sell through rate of 77%.

Three items cracked the $50 barrier. They were the set of 6 Western Horseman Legends books for $50.00; the Starbuck’s Firenze coffee mug for $51.00; and the Civil War set of books by Shelby Foote for $52.00.

Ten of the eleven items from the Library For American Freedoms lot of books I got at the East Grand Forks FOL sale for $5 sold for a total of $215.55 which didn’t hurt my profit for the week. If there was a disappointment for the week it was the set of Wagons West books that only brought $26.27. These often sell for nearly twice that amount.

Here’s how things look at the end of the first week of the Challenge.

Popularity: 27% [?]

If you can’t view the video watch in on the blog.

Popularity: 23% [?]

The first weekend of the 2009 Garage Sale Challenge has come and gone. There are fourteen people taking part this year and many of them, along with myself, spent part of Friday, Saturday, and Sunday digging through what was being offered at local garage sales and thrift stores. You can read about how some of them did on the 2009 Garage Sale Challenge blog.

Friday I went to seventeen garage sales, a Friends Of The Library (FOL) book sale, and all the local thrift stores. On Saturday morning I went to another ten fresh garage sales and revisited all the thrift stores.

Nearly everything that I purchase for the Challenge was books and many of those came from the FOL sale.

Here’s what my expenses look like after the first weekend.

Popularity: 25% [?]