Garage Sales

We had a garage sale this morning. It was a 7am start, and we were effectively done by 9. The big ticket items included a desk, old lawnmower, miscellaneous furniture and a nut tree (don't ask). These Clovis garage salers are rabid.

I was watching this morning and it seems there are a few, well, "moves" in the poetic dance that is garage saling. Here you go:

1. The swoop. This is the move where you swing in close with the car looking for either something specific, or to judge the overall quality of the sale. What follows is either a stop or a polite head nod and then a smoothe acceleration away. For us today I would guess that 90% of the swoops today resulted in the person taking off. Maybe the nut tree wasn't enough to keep them...

2. Haggling. It seems like any good garage saler is able to talk you down. This one older woman today had our sister Jill in fits with her haggling. Jill was quoted as saying: "Um, that's 20 bucks, or 25, whatever you want." God bless Jill, but she was overmatched. These hagglers are relentless, cunning and hard-nosed.

3. Early rising. Garage salers on on the prowl early. We were putting up signs for our 7am start at 6:30, and there were folks in our driveway before we were even finished with the signs, and we live in a double cul-de-sac! I'm pretty convinced that these folks have a "Spider sense" for the sales. As in a garage door goes up on a Saturday before 8am and they get a twitch on the right side of their face...

4. Trucks. Evidently to be a serious garage saler, you need some storage. I mean we saw people driving by with what looked like the local goodwill store in their truckbeds. In fact, let's make it official: if you want to compete with the big boys, nothing less than an F450 willl do...

5. The twofer. I like this move. I suppose it's a subset of haggling. In the twofer, instead of talking down one item, you lump it in with another one and get a double discount. It goes like this: "how about $5 for the lamp AND the nut tree?" Before you know it, as a seller you've effectively given away the nut tree and lost 5 bucks on the lamp...

What a morning. It almost made up for England losing in PKs. By the way, for those of you scoring at home, the nut tree was about the last thing to be sold, I think for a dollar. Another satisfied customer.