Fell for it again...

[OldSowBreath]

The craigslist add said, along these lines: "Gigantic estate/garage sale! Grandmother was a hoarder! Tons of boxes and we aren't anywhere near going through them all! House, three sheds and a garage all full!. Tons of jewelry, antiques, coins, comic books and rare books. Bring old clothes and boxes and be prepared to DIG! Re-seller's delight! No reasonable offers refused! Get here early for the best bargains!"

There were some interesting pictures; enough to whet the appetite, so I made the 50 mile round trip.

By the time I got there (early), most items had been set up on professional style tables in the garage, with some spillage over onto the driveway. I didn't need to wear old clothes; I could have worn a tuxedo without any concerns.

Apparently Grandma would buy lots of items, sometimes multiple, identical antique items in boxes with barcodes, and loved to display her antiques with the store's sales tags still attached.

I was a little surprised that Grannie collected picked-over, non-collectible comic books and common coins.

And Maw-Maw must have repeatedly bought her stuff from the same antique store, since the price tags were identical, being those tags you commonly see at most antique stores/malls.

All my reasonable offers for the very few items that interested me were refused outright by her son/grandson/flunky. Apparently, a reasonable offer was the price on the existing antique store price tag. Periodically, the ghost of the dearly departed hoarder ancestor would walk out of the house and survey the non-disposition of her estate. Death did not improve her desire to discount her worldly goods, however.

Oh, well. I do try and learn from my mistakes, but I'm angry that I've made this mistake many times before. In hindsight, every word in the craigslist ad was a red-flag kill word.

 

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[vpnavy]

That one time you don't go - you will read here on TN that someone found a zillion dollar find at a Garage Sale advertised on craigslist!

 

[sd3030]

LOL, how true! But it may have cost you a zillion + ten dollars over the course of time to find it!

 

[mugsisme]

So sorry! How frustrating. So you didn't get anything at all? What a bummer.

 

[huntsman53]

Sorry that the Estate/Garage Sale was a bust! It seems that around here, more and more Yard/Garage Sales are popping up and they are selling much of the same stuff that you find at these small Auction places. You know, the one's where they purchase a tractor-trailer load of returned, damaged and close-out items! They advertise them as "1st Yard/Garage Sale of the year" or "3 Family Yard/Garage Sale" and some can be spotted a mile away. However, since this was not divulged in the Ads, it is a wasted trip with wasted gas just to find out. There is even one home that has an Estate Sale every year for a month or so and has gone on for about 4 years or more now. I know that not everything they put out sells but a lot of stuff does sell and in the 4 years that I know of, they have put out enough items to fill the house 5 to 6 times over. Evidently, they are using the Estate Sale as a ruse for resell of items that they regularly purchase at Yard/Garage Sales and Estate Auctions and get away with not having a Business License or pay any taxes. I am lucky to have a few dollars profit after I pay State Sales and Use Taxes on the items I sell, not too mention any taxes paid to Uncle Sam on what little I make!


Frank

 

[releventchair]

I kinda accidentally bumped a sale sign at the drive entrance with my truck a little bit leaving a "sale" once.
But it's a long wheelbase and the turn was kinda sharp.....

 

[kingskid1611]

I avoid multi-family or moving garage sales. I usually look for yard sales out in the sticks because they have the goods they are willing to deal on due to the low volume of buyers.

 

[huntsman53]

I kinda accidentally bumped a sale sign at the drive entrance with my truck a little bit leaving a "sale" once.
But it's a long wheelbase and the turn was kinda sharp.....

I hope you were stealthy so that they did not know the sign was down until the end of the day!


Frank

 

[releventchair]

Gee it's been slow a while. Wonder why.

 

[diggummup]

A little online research can sometimes go a long way when it comes to finding out if an "estate sale" is really an estate sale. Down here I can view county property records information online. This gives me the home owners name, the house value, when they bought it, etc.. From there I can check the county clerk court records online by doing a Public Case Search (Civil, Family & Probate) to see if the person has actually passed away or if they are in foreclosure or what have you. You can also check obituaries and sometimes just by googling the name or name and city of the person, you can find out information. It sounds like a lot of legwork but if you already have your sites bookmarked then it only takes a few minutes, literally. Most of the time I can find out whether the sale is worth going to with the information I find online about the person or the address of the sale. If course none of this matters if you have some out of touch with reality, everything we have is gold, idiot running the sale.

 

[dumpsterdiver]

I read this post last night and it really made me laugh. Then, I thought I haven't been to an estate sale in years. So I looked around online and picked three and a "community" yardsale. First estate sale had outrageous prices I could tell by the quality of stuff I should have been there yesterday which was the first day of the sale. A few people were laughing out loud at the prices. I gathered up a handful of things and he probably kicked off about $10 for every thirty dollars. I did ok. It was all real vintage high end stuff from a lady who was downsizing and moving to Manhattan in her 80's. I think I was too late to the party and what was left was priced too high.

The community yardsale was mostly a joke. A few enterprising people were selling hamburgers. I bought an amarilis bulb for .50 cents. Lots of walking for mostly new stuff. Kids selling their video games for prices where they clearly did not want to part with their video games.

Next estate sale did have opened half full bottles of liquor for sale. I was confident it was an estate sale. Prices were crazy. Really used gas grill for $150. Shovels the price of shovels in the store maybe higher. I would have an estate sale every week if I thought those prices were achievable. Lenox set of 12 for some price so high I actually black it out from my mind.

Last estate sale was in a gated community. Asian family. $6000 ostrich purse. Yeah you read that correctly. However, if you are interested it will be $3000 tomorrow. Artwork with the original price tag of $7 for $45. Everything was basically full eBay price. Lots of Mah Jong sets. Lots of driving around for not much payoff but I probably will try to keep track of the different companies for future reference. Anyway thanks for inspiring my own crazy adventure today.

The craigslist add said, along these lines: "Gigantic estate/garage sale! Grandmother was a hoarder! Tons of boxes and we aren't anywhere near going through them all! House, three sheds and a garage all full!. Tons of jewelry, antiques, coins, comic books and rare books. Bring old clothes and boxes and be prepared to DIG! Re-seller's delight! No reasonable offers refused! Get here early for the best bargains!"

There were some interesting pictures; enough to whet the appetite, so I made the 50 mile round trip.

By the time I got there (early), most items had been set up on professional style tables in the garage, with some spillage over onto the driveway. I didn't need to wear old clothes; I could have worn a tuxedo without any concerns.

Apparently Grandma would buy lots of items, sometimes multiple, identical antique items in boxes with barcodes, and loved to display her antiques with the store's sales tags still attached.

I was a little surprised that Grannie collected picked-over, non-collectible comic books and common coins.

And Maw-Maw must have repeatedly bought her stuff from the same antique store, since the price tags were identical, being those tags you commonly see at most antique stores/malls.

All my reasonable offers for the very few items that interested me were refused outright by her son/grandson/flunky. Apparently, a reasonable offer was the price on the existing antique store price tag. Periodically, the ghost of the dearly departed hoarder ancestor would walk out of the house and survey the non-disposition of her estate. Death did not improve her desire to discount her worldly goods, however.

Oh, well. I do try and learn from my mistakes, but I'm angry that I've made this mistake many times before. In hindsight, every word in the craigslist ad was a red-flag kill word.

 

[billjustbill]

The craigslist add said, along these lines: "Gigantic estate/garage sale! Grandmother was a hoarder! Tons of boxes and we aren't anywhere near going through them all! House, three sheds and a garage all full!. Tons of jewelry, antiques, coins, comic books and rare books. Bring old clothes and boxes and be prepared to DIG! Re-seller's delight! No reasonable offers refused! Get here early for the best bargains!"

There were some interesting pictures; enough to whet the appetite, so I made the 50 mile round trip.

By the time I got there (early), most items had been set up on professional style tables in the garage, with some spillage over onto the driveway. I didn't need to wear old clothes; I could have worn a tuxedo without any concerns.

Apparently Grandma would buy lots of items, sometimes multiple, identical antique items in boxes with barcodes, and loved to display her antiques with the store's sales tags still attached.

I was a little surprised that Grannie collected picked-over, non-collectible comic books and common coins.

And Maw-Maw must have repeatedly bought her stuff from the same antique store, since the price tags were identical, being those tags you commonly see at most antique stores/malls.

All my reasonable offers for the very few items that interested me were refused outright by her son/grandson/flunky. Apparently, a reasonable offer was the price on the existing antique store price tag. Periodically, the ghost of the dearly departed hoarder ancestor would walk out of the house and survey the non-disposition of her estate. Death did not improve her desire to discount her worldly goods, however.

Oh, well. I do try and learn from my mistakes, but I'm angry that I've made this mistake many times before. In hindsight, every word in the craigslist ad was a red-flag kill word.

Where there's a "Dollar" involved, you can count on a percentage of humans twisting Truth and Ethics... to gain an advantage. (Like the last Superbowl's Airgate)

I did have to laugh at local "Twisting Entrepreneurs".... There was a big long listing in local and area newspaper ads called a "Living Estate Sale". In truth and reality, it was three old men Dealers that move all their stuff into a run-down house and fenced lot one of them owned. The quantity of junk was mind boggling and the overall quality was lower than what a person would set out for trash pickup....

Seemingly, the small brief ads have better reliability and promise than the fancy ones...

Hang in there,

Bill

 

[Tallone]

Excessive hype in an ad tends to peg my BS-o-meter and cause me to spend my time elsewhere. That being said, I still get sucked in from time to time. Chalk it up to the price of doing business. Sorry this one was a bust for you.

 

[spyguy]

I've been to my share of these so I can relate. Seems like with the economy improving there simply aren't as many good garage sales or as much good stuff. Here's a true story though with the exact opposite spin. More than three years ago I was driving with a gal pal of mine and we spotted a crappy looking sign with only an arrow pointing the way. Turned out to be in a very small trailer park --- not looking good.... So we take a look around and instantly my eyes were drawn to tons of binders and boxes full of sports cards. This is something that always gets my attention b/c I've collected them since I was a kid. Most of the cards were of the mass-produced 1990's era variety (see also sold cheaply by the pound). So, I pick up a large shoebox and start rifling through it like the Hope Diamond might be at the bottom. I'm seeing some promising stuff in there mainly the great mix of sports represented; baseball, basketball, football, hockey, and some miscellaneous non-sport cards like super heroes, Star Trek cards etc. It's definitely worth asking about so I ask the eternal GS question: "HOW MUCH?" The poor and I do mean poor lady explains that her Dad was owed money on a storage unit and was selling this stuff on the fly. She asks $10 for the box which I was glad to pay, but my gal pal interjects "$5!!!" which the lady quickly accepts. So, I paid it and walked away with approximately 1500 cards. As were walking away to the car a neighbor says did you get the Babe Ruth card I about had a coronary as I trotted back to the sale to look closer at the binders and other boxes. The seller lady explained that some guys were messing with it earlier and that they probably stole it. I looked through some binders, but no dice. Now, I'm really excited thinking of the possibilities since I always put my best cards in shoe boxes not binders. In other words, I probably already had it in the box I'd bought. We again walked back to the car and left. I went through them all one by one and alas, no Babe Ruth. But I realized that it must've been a reprint or modern recreation b/c there were others in there by Sporting News of players like Cubs HOF pitcher Mordecai "Three Finger" Brown. The highlights were a Shaq rookie which would easily recoup my entire investment on ebay and also a Jeff Gordon rookie which would sell for around $20. I haven't sold any of these cards and don't plan to. I had more fun spending hours combing through that large box and hoping than I deserved for that amount of money. I later felt bad that I hadn't handed the lady the $10 w/ no bargaining since she obviously needed it way more than me.... The moral to this story is a simple one: SOMETIMES THE BEST FINDS CAN BE IN THE MOST UNLIKELY PLACES
HH
-spyguy

 

[cyberdan]

I kinda accidentally bumped a sale sign at the drive entrance with my truck a little bit leaving a "sale" once.
But it's a long wheelbase and the turn was kinda sharp.....

Of course you immediatly got out and picked up that sign, not wanting to litter, and threw it in the back of your truck.

I have been known (only to myself) for taking down a few signs. It was just to save future buyers the grief of having to put up with some a$$ seller.