JUNE 27-28 GARAGE SALE UPDATE #3

My first Vast Accumulation of Stuff garage sale is Friday, June 27 and Saturday, June 28 at 840 Damon Drive in Medina, Ohio. The sale times are 9 am to noon each day.

I'm almost finished with my garage sale preparations. I have to make signs for the boxes and for the refrigerator that serves as a kind of garage sale bulletin board. That's about it.

I'm up to about 30 e-mails or phone calls from people who wanted to know if they could come to the sale tonight or, in one case, at 7 am on Friday morning. I appreciate their wanting first crack at the wondrous items I have for sale. I'm confounded by their belief that I would actually do this for them and screw over my other customers.

I was amused by the one caller who told me that I was clearly not interested in accommodating a "serious buyer." He's right. I much prefer happy-go-lucky customers who make the garage sales a pleasure for me. Somehow, I'll survive without his serious business.

In the future, I might accommodate buyers who can't come to the sales at the listed times.  But they would only be offered the opportunity to come after the listed times and not before. Also, unless I know them, I would charge them a cover charge. Long gone are the days when I sit patiently for a after-hours customer to go through every box and buy $3 worth of comics. My time is much more valuable to me than that.

I'm taking a calmer approach to this summer's garage sales. They will be more of them, but I won't spend hours and days going through hundreds of boxes for items I know will sell quickly.  I'm sure there will always be hundreds of items like that in each sale, but my aim has always been to sell everything I don't want to keep. So I'm going through the boxes in a more methodical manner that will, hopefully, enable me to clear space in some of the rooms in my house and reduce my rented storage unit from two back down to one.

For this summer's sales, I've set my weekly goals than I did last year. I recognize the competition from comics conventions in the state. I think there's one almost every weekend.

I'm also looking at a lot of paying writing gigs on my desk. While I will always make sure I have plenty of good stuff for sale at these events, I'm not going to obsess about it.

I have plenty of paying writing work on my desk. I have other revenue streams besides the writing and the VAOS sales. They will all have to share my attention.

I expect to have fun at this weekend's garage sales. I think you'll have fun at them, too. I think you'll find stuff you didn't even know you wanted.

I hope to see you on Friday and/or Saturday.

Have a great weekend.

Tony Isabella