Takin It to the Streets

Right, so my mom and I set up at a city garage/street sale this Saturday. I went over to her place on Friday night to help her load up some of her stuff into my car since I wasn’t selling much and had some space. Then we had some dinner, relaxed and then I went home and finished up getting the rest of my stuff ready.

That was a task. I wanted to sell some of my jewelry, so for the past couple nights I was going through the little drawers, trying to untangle my glob of necklaces. Much like untangling Christmas lights. Each piece of jewelry went into a little Ziplock snack bag. I bought a box of 100, and by the end of the night there were only a few of those bags left. Anyway, I was all set and by the time I got to bed, around 12:30am, I was done.

Then around 8am on Saturday morning, my mom and I met up and found our spot. It was just a little walk down from Mr. Heroes, and adjacent to a car repair center that was closed that day, so people were setting up in the empty lot. The city’s garage sale was scheduled to start at 10am. We started setting up at a little after 8 and people were already perusing our goods (tee hee). One guy was suited up with a baseball hat and an empty newspaper sack slung over his shoulder. He was a serious shopper. Each time I took something out of a box and put it on the table, he’d pick it up and consider buying it. He even stopped waiting for me to put it on the table, I was picking stuff out of the box, and I felt a presence and saw a shadow hovering over me. He gently took the thing I had in my hand and gathered that up to buy. A little pushy, but he did buy a good supply of stuff.

The neighbor on one side of us was not happy at first. They paid an extra 15 dollars to have a table already set up for them, but the table had not arrived in time. They eventually did get a table and were happy campers. To the other side of us was a nice, friendly guy selling mostly books and some T-shirts, both long and short-sleeved. More on that later.

We were able to eventually unpack all of our boxes and finally sit down. The forecast for that day had called for thunderstorms. They must’ve known we meant business, because, even though we had spots of rain, it did not get threatening and moved on. The sun made a few appearances during the day and I was able to get a sunburn!

After a few brief cloud bursts, the temps cooled off. I was not prepared. My mom kept telling me I should put something on my arms. AlienCG was a witness to this, as he was one of our customers! Thanks for stopping by and for buying a game, AlienCG! Anyway, my mom noticed that the guy next door had some long-sleeved shirts for sale. I checked them out and, after noticing that most of them had themes that I didn’t want to wear, I declined without going into detail. My mom eventually realized that I was right to not buy something that advertised beer or one that had a picture of a deer with antlers and read, “Nice rack!” There’s a time and place for advertising, but it wasn’t at that time or place. My mom found the tablecloth we didn’t think we’d use, and gave it to me to wear. That helped a whole lot. Thank you, warm tablecloth.

Since my mom had no real desire to go shopping up and down the streets, she let me go check stuff out. I had my eye on Gamestop’s booth, figuring they would be selling some Wii games. Nope. They were selling some Xbox games and stuff, and also some movies. I was happily surprised to see that the horribly B-type movie called “Sssss” was there! I picked that up right away and only paid 2 bucks for it. There were two guys selling the stuff, and the older guy nudged the younger one when I bought the movie and said, “See, I told you someone would buy that movie! I personally think it’s worth way more than 2 dollars.” The deal had already been made, though. Briefly, it’s about a crazy scientist who convinces Dirk Benedict to take a serum which he thinks will make him stronger, when it fact it slowly turns him into a snake.

We made some customers happy during the day by bargaining with them (sometimes I started bargaining before they even offered). One girl walked away very happy because she could afford the Legos Indiana Jones game I had available. Also had a box of free stuff and a group of little kids REALLY liked that idea. It was a very successful day!

I will now close with some dialogue from Jeff Foxworthy’s “Totally Committed” CD where he talks about people setting up garage sales:

– “Hey, what’re these?”
– “Oh those? Those are Tupperware lids that have been warped in the dishwasher. Eight for a dime.”
– “What’re we gonna do with warped Tupperware lids? Give you a nickle for em. We won’t use them, we just need something to sell at the garage sale we’re having in a couple weeks.”