AUGUST 9-11 GARAGE SALE UPDATE #1

AUGUST 9-11 GARAGE SALE UPDATE #1

My next Vast Accumulation of Stuff garage sale will take place on
Friday through Sunday, August 9-11, 840 Damon Drive, Medina, Ohio.
Sale hours are 9 am to 1 pm each day. This is the first time I’ve
extended a garage sale to three days.  If the customers come, I’ll
continue holding three-day sales.

My last garage sale, which was held in June, was probably the least
successful garage sale since I started.  The challenge for this one
is to make sure there’s plenty of new items to go along with those
from that previous sale.  It makes preparation for the sale tricky,
but I think customers will be pleased and occasionally amazed with
the selection available to them.

Yesterday - Tuesday - I went to the Fortress of Storage - to grab
six or seven boxes of stuff for the sale.  While I was unloading my
van, a guy pulls into my driveway and wants to start going through
my boxes.  I explain to him - politely - that the garage sale won’t
start until Friday morning.  He can’t understand why he must wait.
I explain to him - still politely - that I’m not ready for the sale
and have boxes to go through and items to priced.  He’s still not
getting it.  Why can’t he go through the boxes now?  He’s actually
getting angry at this point.

I tell him the garage sale doesn’t start until Friday morning and
that he has to leave my garage now.  Which is when he totally loses
it and literally screams “Fuck you!” at me as he storms out of the
garage.  I close the garage door and, as I so often do, wonder what
the heck is wrong with people.

There are two reasons I don’t allow “special showings” of my sales
during my regular garage sale season, which runs from May to around
the first weekend of October.

The first is...it’s not fair to my customers to give first crack at
my sale items to anyone.  There are dealers who have requested this
and, if I allowed them to shop before anyone else, they would very
possibly strip-mine the garage sale of all the best items.  That’s
not fair to my non-dealer customers and I also believe it would be
damaging to my repeat business.

The second is...when I have allowed after-hours special showings in
the past, I’ve almost always been disappointed by how little money
I make for the inconvenience.  Honestly, that $3 sale isn’t worth
an hour of my time. 

It is possible, once my garage sale season is completed, that I’ll
allow some special showings to reduce the amount of stock I have to
put back into storage for next year’s sales.  If and when I decide
to do that, I’ll make an announcement here.  In the meantime, keep
reading this bloggy thing for more garage sale updates.

Have a great day and thanks for your patronage.

Tony Isabella