May 11
17
The Art & Science of the Yard Sale
Attention Buyers & Sellers
Featured Guest post by Ed Augusts
During this on-going economic crisis, there is no doubt that many folks are pinching their pennies. Retail-priced items are difficult to sell. Many malls and particularly antique malls are under-attended, to say the least. Retail stores are not prospering. The one bright note for both buyers AND sellers is the wonderful world of independent yard sales, garage sales, moving sales, estate sales, and rummage sales, in which the seller can get much-needed cash, and the buyer can find a bargain without paying more than a small percentage of retail prices.
There are two points of view when it comes to sales. The seller’s point of view and the buyer’s point of view. From the seller’s point of view, MORE BUYERS are needed. More customers that arrive at the sale looking for the very things he or she is selling. There is nothing more frustrating to a seller at a yard or garage sale than someone coming up to the carport and saying, “Hello! You got any tools for sale?” and maybe his wife asks, “Do you have any dolls?” And most likely, the seller has NOTHING like that. They wouldn’t know a doll from Shirley Temple. Being able to list what you’re selling and putting this on a searchable on-line database makes these kinds of useless hit-and-miss encounters less likely. That’s where YardSales.com can come in and be enormously helpful to anyone planning a yard sale or any other kind of home-based sale.
Now, from the buyers’ perspective, MORE SELLERS ARE NEEDED and finding out WHERE THE SELLERS ARE of the particular thing the buyer wants is really important! Wouldn’t it be VERY helpful to anyone looking for dolls, tools, books, or any other kind of item, to be able to see in advance where these things were going to be offered for sale on a given day, so they could make a bee-line to those locations, and not hit-or-miss driving around eating up the gasoline, at a dozen places that might not have anything at all that they’re interested in?
Do not be dismayed in the slightest by the economy. Let me tell you about collectors! Collectors are often amateurs, but even so, assuming they have studied, read, and collected — this makes them specialists in one or more particular areas of interest. If they find out that YOU have a bunch of what they are collecting, they will raid their piggy bank, and they will stop at the ATM, and camp out on your doorstep, if necessary to be first in line to get in!
They WANT what you are SELLING, no matter what the economy is doing right now! I tell this to people, but they seem to have a hard time understanding it… No matter how short people are with money, no matter what the interest rate is, or what the unemployment rate is, collectors are ALWAYS collecting. Some of them are out-of-control collectors who just “HAVE” to have something! I knew a woman who collected little elephants. Ceramic elephants, brass elephants, wooden elephants… if there had been an elephant made out of elephant, she would have wanted THAT, too! Show her an elephant — she wants it! She is going to keep buying elephants even if she has to eat corned beef hash instead of steak. Collectors are like that! That’s how their houses get so full of stuff! (And then eventually, they, or their heirs, have to throw a yard sale!)
Thank Goodness for YardSales.com coming along and letting people find these sales, as they pop-up independently across the country. Every weekend brings a surprise or two, and the whole point of connecting the buyers with the sellers is a task that is often difficult to do without an updated database and quick, Internet delivery-system of local information. It looks like YardSales.com is going to provide this much-needed database in a searchable format that we all can benefit from.
Ed Augusts is the author of “Get Rich Buying at Yard Sales”. For more information or to order: http://www.edaugusts.com/YardSales/
