Crazies at the yard sale

[CrazedClerkthe2nd]

A few years ago, I helped a friend of mine run a yard sale he was having.

For the most part, the customers were decent, but there were definitely some bad apples. I would never have believed people would try to haggle the price on a 0.50 item, but this happened more than once during this sale.

But the one who took the cake was this guy who had his eye on a relatively decent stereo system. This particular unit sells for over $200 in stores and my friend was asking only $45. Obviously any fool should know this is a great bargain.

Not this guy.

CG = Cheap guy.

CG: I'll give you $30 for this.
Me: Sorry sir, the price is $45, I don't think the seller wants to go any lower.
CG: I said I'll give you $30! *waves money in my face*
Me: And I just told you, the price is $45.
CG: You can't go any lower?
Me: I don't think so, let me find out. (I call over the seller, L)

L: Sorry sir, I won't go any lower on the stereo.
CG: That's ridiculous, you should be happy to get anything for it!
L: This stereo sells for $200 in a store, I'm already offering a huge bargain here, you can either take it or leave it.
CG: I will take it....but only for $30!
L: I can't do that.
CG: I can't believe you would refuse a sale! Do you know we're in a recession? Do you know how hard money is to come by these days? You should be pleased I am here and willing to buy this from you.
L: I know we are in a recession sir, but like I just told you, I'm already offering this item at a very fair price and I will not go lower.
CG: Bullshit! You sell this to me for $30 right now!
L: No! Please get off my property NOW.
CG: I'm not moving until you sell me this for $30!
L: If you do not leave I will call the police and have you arrested.
CG: You wouldn't dare!
(I hand L my phone, he starts dialing)
CG: Ok! ok, I'm leaving. (he leaves, grumbling the entire time).

About an hour later we sold the stereo...for $45.

That wasn't all that happened. A woman wanted to buy a whole set of figurines for $5. We're talking a set of a least 30 priced at a dollar each.

Also, several items were stolen including a stack of magazines, a couple of old nintendo games and a folding chair.

My friend did make around $500 in the process but he vowed after that it'd be a long time before he had another yard sale.

[draftermatt]

We had 4 yard sales to sell my grandmother's belongings. I had people argue with me over a few dollars. One guy who showed me two things I said $5 he agreed, then picked up a box filled with stuff and walked out.

It pissed me off, but what didn't sell got thrown out or given away so I didn't care.

I like yard sales, I like doing them, but I hate yard sale people.

[Gruesome]

I love the ones who adhere to the "touch rule," where anything you are touching is yours until you aren't touching it anymore. I've seen people get a finger on a bigger item like an appliance or a chair and then act like it is a leash on them, straining to see other things while still touching the item. I've even seen one lady demand that the people running the sale bring stuff over to her while she is holding down an old crib.

People are repulsive creatures most of the time.

[Cookie]

Oh gosh. The memories! My family had a yardsale twice a year while I was growing up. :shudder: Don't you just love the old ladies with curlers still in their hair banging on your door at 5 a.m. "You having a yard sale?!" Yes, and the ad stated we open at 7. Come back then. :cue catbutt face:

[Magpie]

My mom made the mistake of offering a good price when someone came over and wanted to buy a bunch of carboys (she doesn't like haggling). He then tried to offer a lower price, and she told him no. After she convinced him that she wasn't going to budge he came and offered ME the lower price. Sorry dude, not that stupid.

I'd need to have a lot of good stuff before a garage sale would be worth the effort. I'll just take it to the thrift store (if it's good enough quality). I don't want to have to deal with that "oh, it doesn't work" tactics. (FTR, the blender worked perfectly, and we had an outlet we could use to demonstrate this).

[JustaCashier]

I love yard sales, swap meets, and such. If not to buy, to at least look.

But, yes, yard sale shoppers can suck big time. Nice thing about it, unlike our real jobs, a person having a yard sale can tell the "customer" to go to hell if they cop an attitude like that ass did.

Now, I can understand making an offer, many sellers will set a price a bit higher than they really want to get, to allow for dickering. But, if the seller says "No" to an offer, then pay what they are asking, or simply walk away, or go to hell.

Also, sucky yard salers will block neighbors driveways, leave the ass end of their 1970's land yacht suckmobile sticking halfway into the street when parked, and crawl along at 2 m.p.h. when driving by a yard sale, even when the house is on a somewhat busy arterial.

A couple of personal experiences: when I had my house years ago, my neighbors behind me in the alley (great couple, really liked them) were holding their once a year yard sale. I needed to get my car out of my garage on the alley, but some dumbass visiting the sale had blocked my garage door, and was technically parked partly on my property. I went over and mentioned it to the neighbor, and I think he was more pissed at the guy than I was!

Another time, probably 25-30 years ago now, I was at the swap meet. Now, even though I realize, as mentioned above, that sometimes sellers expect to dicker, it's just not in my nature, I'll either pay the price marked, or choose not to buy the item. Walked by this one stall, and was checking out a toaster oven for like $15.00, before I could even say "I'll take it" and hand her the $15.00, the lady says "I'll take an offer!" So, I said "$12.00?", she said 'Sold"!

To top that off, she mentioned that she had the owner's manual at home, and if I gave her my address, she'd mail it to me. So, I gave it to her, and sure enough, probably within a week, I received the manual, which being the size it was, cost her probably another buck or two in postage.

Mike

[Merriweather]

A few years ago, I helped a friend of mine run a yard sale he was having.

For the most part, the customers were decent, but there were definitely some bad apples. I would never have believed people would try to haggle the price on a 0.50 item, but this happened more than once during this sale.

I had a garage sale to sell off a lot of craft items this past weekend, so since it was 99% crafty ladies, it wasn't as bad as most. But I had one lady drive all the way back to my house the second day of the sale wanting to exchange a 25 cent sheet of stickers She then wandered around for half an hour (as we were trying to close up), bought another $2 worth of stuff, then, the day after the sale, emailed me (I had posted the sale on Craigs List) that she'd accidentilly left that sticker sheet and wanted it back I'd no idea she left it, everything has been packed up for Goodwill or whatever, and I'd already lowered her total (and just about everyone's) whenever they bought anything, so she'd essentially gotten stuff for nothing, so I refuse to worry about her dang 25 cent sticker

[protege]

Ugh. My family had quite a few garage sales over the years...

Nearly all of that crap was my great-grandmother's. For years, she'd bug my grandfather to drive her down there for the winter...and back for the spring. Couldn't afford to fly, because she was "poor." Yet, over the entire time she was down there...she'd go to garage sales. She'd literally send back *crates* full of crap.

By "crap," I mean most of it was just that. The sort of thing that really needs to die, yet some idiot thinks they can get a penny or two for it at a garage sale. You name it--costume jewelry, old books, shoes, purses, bottles--seemed the boxes full of that stuff were endless. After she moved up to Maine, to live with my aunt, we literally hauled several truckloads of crap out of my grandmother's house. Nearly all of that shit was carefully stored at our house, in the hope that we'd be able to sell it.

But, eventually it grew tiresome, and expensive. Expensive, because it was costing us to load up that shit into station wagon, drive across town, and then rent a stall or two at the drive-in. Also, the customers were simply cheap bastards.

I mean, we got tired of having people bitch and moan that an entire bag (fill the bag of books for $1) was too expensive, or that things were being sold that weren't "perfect" (sorry bitch, it's a *garage sale.* You want it clean? Buy it and do it yourself ), or that they should get another discount because "parts are missing" (again, it's a fucking garage sale, what do you expect?)

In fact, at the last sale we had over there...quite a bit of that shit ended up *not* coming home with us. That is, it was tossed

[RetailWorkhorse]

I love yard sales THIIIIIIS MUCH. And flea markets (if only because I'm currently set up on weekends to sell from the hotdog cart). Vendors are my favourite people.

[Midorikawa]

I admit, I've found a number of great things at yard sales over the years. Found an original Super Mario Brothers arcade cabinet for $50, a decent stereo that's served me well for the last 10 years, among other things. However, yard sales will forever be a "to be blocked from my memory" item. Between next door neighbors having yard sales resulting in people showing up at my house at 5 AM asking when the yard sale is, to people who slam on their brakes in the middle of the street, throw it in park, and get out, leaving a line of cars behind them (yes, this actually happened. :-/)

...Then there's the former school teacher who slammed on her brakes in the middle of the road, I was 16 at the time, and driving my dad's 1985 VW Quantum, which didn't stop easily in emergencies. I didn't quite get stopped in time, as I hit her at under 3MPH (bumper is designed to crack at speeds above 3MPH.) She was such an EW she later sued me when my insurance company turned down her claim of $10,000 in damages.

Of course, she had a crackpot lawyer who served my dad instead, and then didn't notice until after expiry of statute of limitations, but I digress. :-D

[fireheart]

"It's a candy dish Ned, $90."

[Green_Fairy]

the best thing i ever found at a garage sale was a hand-made wooden coffee table with a glass top. $5. served me well until one of my friends sat on it and cracked the glass. i have fond memories of going to garage/yard sales and flee markets/swap meets with my parents when i was younger. i found a pair of cat-eye glasses that was, at the time, close enough to my exact prescription.
luckily i haven't had to deal with any CSs while shopping...but i have a feeling i will eventually *le sigh*

[Dreamstalker]

The first yard/estate sale we had to liquidate my grandmother's stuff, we made the mistake of advertising it. We got a full gamut of the vultures. A lady who tried to scam us out of a lot of old coins and my great-grandmother's Victorian jewelry (which wasn't even out for sale...did she actually go into the house?!) by hiding it under some newer junk beads. When I sniffed out the goods and called her on it she tried to convince me it was "tarnished costume junk"...that didn't work and she was boiling mad that she got caught. When she threw a doll at my head was when I ducked into the shed and started carrying a baseball bat around.

Other smaller stuff walked off. I did catch a couple kids stuffing books into their shirts and the mom telling them to do it. Sad really, the books were only a quarter each and if they were truly short on cash I would have made a deal.

We had some NICE vintage china, including a full set of Noritake that I had staked a claim to if it didn't sell at our asking price ($300, which was quite a bargain for that set in mint condition). Some idjit broke the most unique piece...she came back later demanding the lot for $10 because "one piece is broken" (um, NO, if anything we should charge you the replacement value of what you broke).

People wanted to get in the house to "see if there was anything good in there." NO!

[powerboy]

I shopped at yard sales before. I am the type that if I want something, then I will buy it for that price. I am not going to haggle for a few bucks.


I remember having yard sales, back when I was younger. I also remember one woman was trying to haggle an older TV that was priced $50.00 down to $15.00. She didn't get it, because my grandfather didn't give in

[wolfie]

Also, several items were stolen including a stack of magazines, a couple of old nintendo games and a folding chair.

When I was younger I was a bit of an electronics hobbyist. I lent out a "special" Nintendo game (this was in the days of ROM cartridges, not CD-ROMs) to neighbours who were having yard sales. What was special about it? I had opened up the shell and replaced the contents (didn't have a Nintendo machine myself - this was a "dud" which friends had somehow fried and were going to throw away) with an EEPROM that would display a screen I'd made up (straight text along the lines of "I hate thieves - you're going to regret your sticky fingers"), a homemade DC-to-DC converter feeding off the power buses to the ROM chip to charge up a capacitor, and a simple timer (IIRC, a couple NE-2 lamps in series that would "trip" when the capacitor reached the firing voltage of the string, approximately 270 volts) that would turn on an SCR and discharge the capacitor into one of the data lines the system used to communicate with the ROM cartridge. Of course, this was "Oops! Didn't mean to put that one out - it's not for sale" if a customer brought it up and wanted to buy it. After a couple yard sales, it got stolen, but I didn't mind.