“More Fun Than A Yard Sale” Revisited…

Marketing Genius!

A few months ago we posted the story More Fun Than A Yard Sale. This story chronicled our adventures in beer specials and posting on Craigslist on a Saturday afternoon.  It was a great Saturday and Chris and I had a blast writing ridiculous classified advertisements with the hopes of unloading some of our unwanted or excess belongings.

This past Saturday, however, we had a real-live yard sale and the results were every bit as fun and just a tad more profitable. 

Our yard sale was totally spur of the moment and we did not do anything normal yard sale folks typically do to promote the event. We did not put an ad in the local paper. We did not post the event on Craigslist. We did not put any signs more than a block away from our house and only advertised on Facebook with a last minute status update informing our friends of the activity. In all honesty, we conducted this sale with only one cheek on the seat, so to speak.

Despite this lack of planning, we had an absolute blast.

We started Friday night by venturing out on the street with tasty beverages, bright orange signs, and a hammer and nails. We put signs up in the front and back of our house as well as a couple at the ends of our block.  Along the way we met our new neighbors in the rear and invited them to join us in Saturday’s festivities.

Six A.M. Saturday morning came earlier than I would have liked but we dragged ourselves out of bed and started emptying the contents of our basement garage into our driveway. By 7:30 people were stomping across our front yard and parking on our lawn to see what hidden treasures we might have to sell.  Allow me to share some of the highlights…

One woman tried to give my wife fifty cents for a knife set clearly labeled $50.  This was a $600 Cutco knife set, by the way.  Chris thought it was priced to sell but the nice lady thought we were con-artists to sell a knife set for $50 with two steak knives missing.  Needless to say, fifty cents was her final offer and no deal was made.

Another woman tried to buy my son’s baby jogger… for her dogs. Seriously. She had plans to put her dogs in the jogger so she could walk them around her neighborhood. Unfortunately, the jogger would not fit in the trunk of her brand new Mercedes and she was afraid to put it in her backseat because her husband would see her purchase and tell her she was crazy. The truth hurts, Ma’am.

One guy would not accept the fact that my Weber grill was not for sale.  Another wandered into our garage and asked to buy tools that I use for work and was not willing to sell. The same guy wanted to buy my Grandfather’s tackle box and was personally insulted that I would not part with for any price.

The Poop Basket Sold

A nice grandmotherly type spent at least 30 minutes rummaging through a big box of kids’ clothes. She bypassed every nice, clean, barely used article of outerwear but purchased every pair of my sons used underwear and socks she could find.  I honestly did not even know those things were in there and I feel bad for the child that receives them. Sure they were clean but used underwear is nasty at any age.

We sold baskets for fifty cents, a box of oatmeal that Ivan would not eat and a can of Christmas cookies that is now eleven months old at best. Every small, cheap, useless-to-me item that they could find left our property quicker than I could have dragged it to the curb for the garbage truck.  Nobody bought the knives, the televisions or the furniture.  All of this was a great source of amusement to use both even if we did not sell anything that actually put real money in our pockets. 

The best part of the day was the fun we had and the friends we made. Two sets of neighbors came by and we had a great time getting to know them better.  Another couple that only knows of us from this blog came by and we had the chance to meet new people in the neighborhood and start new friendships.  The highlight of the day actually came in their arrival when I heard a man yell from across the yard, “Hey! We know you from the internets!” Indeed you do!

Still For Sale

This is why we have this blog and I guess this is why we had the yard sale.  We love to meet new people and share who we are and what we do with people like us. Even if we only made $120 and lost a Saturday opportunity to sleep late, we had a blast and made new friends.  It will not pay our next power bill but sometimes we are happy to make something a little more valuable than money.

Next time we will probably advertise, though. Seriously, those TV’s have got to go.