Having never done it anywhere else, I’m not sure how big of a thing garage sales are outside the Midwest, but here, they’re a REALLY big thing. We held an annual one at my grandparents’ house (because we didn’t have a garage) with several other families when I was growing up, and I remember how angry the 7 a.m. sale stalkers made my mom.
“We’re still getting everything ready! I specifically asked for no early birds in the newspaper ad!”
I equate this to showing up early to dinner at someone’s house, which I maintain is one of the rudest things you can do. They’re still trying to cook and prep and you showing up early makes them feel like they should be engaging in polite conversation with you, but really they just need to get the rolls out of the oven and put ice in everyone’s glasses and they can’t because you’re hovering, Patty!
I fell out of garage-saling for a while because it’s a very time-consuming crapshoot. And also because I refuse to go stalk someone’s houses at 7:30 a.m. on a Saturday to get the good stuff. And by good stuff, I mostly mean unstained clothing that will fit my kids. These are incredibly rare finds. On the rare chance I find something actually in my children’s current size, I inevitably inspect it and discover a permanent Kool-aid stain. Or worse. So I’ve tried to go to the rich-people neighborhood garage sales the last few years, assuming they will have higher-quality items. My experience from a few weeks back caused me to reconsider.
Some of the wealthiest neighborhoods in my city were having garage sales on the same weekend. Many of them started on Friday, which I hate, because I have a regular office job and don’t feel like taking a day off work to peruse unwanted knick knacks. So I headed out around 10 a.m. on a Saturday, which I guess put me at a disadvantage.
In the first neighborhood, I saw middle-aged women driving around between sales on a golf cart drinking wine. Yup, that’s exactly what I thought life was like there. Blonde-haired, blue-eyed children were selling lemonade and snacks at most of the sales.
A man tried to sell me a scratched-up child’s bike for $50.
“The front tire doesn’t hold air, but you can replace the tube or use fix-a-flat or something like that.”
I’m going to assume that rich people don’t shop at regular-people stores like Target or Wal-Mart, so they don’t realize you could buy a brand new kid’s bike for just $20 or $30 more than what he was asking. Ain’t nobody got time to drop a Ulysses (S. Grant - who’s on the $50 bill - is that how they say it on the streets nowadays?) on a busted bike.
It seems rich people holding garage sales either vastly overprice or vastly underprice their items. There is no middle ground. They’re either asking $20 for a puzzle or 25 cents for a 16-piece set of Fiestaware.
I also found the clothes rich people sell at their garage sales are mostly dry clean only. (With the exception of the plethora of stay-at-home moms’ failed Cricut experiments I saw.) I haven’t dry cleaned anything in at least a decade. I don’t buy stuff that says “dry clean only.” I barely even iron. I guess the wealthy among us can pay for a nice service to have their dry cleaning picked up and dropped off at their houses. The only kind of home delivery service I can spring for is milk. And guess what? Most of that hoity-toity “dry clean only” business does just find if you wash it in a machine on the gentle cycle and hang it to dry. Which I have to do now because I bought some of their really cute, snooty dry-clean-only things.
Rich people also have expensive, purebred dogs who either are watching you peruse their sale or have already deposited their hair on everything available for purchase. Do their well-to-do owners even try to run a lint roller over these hair-caked items? No. You should feel honored their Great Pyrenees shedded all over that outdated comforter.
Some rich people couldn’t even be bothered with the work to actually put on a garage sale. One house had a table with designer women’s shoes and several other items around with a sign asking anyone interested to ring the doorbell to inquire about price. At least she was trusting, I guess.
I think from now on I’ll stick to middle-class garage sales. They’re where I’ve found the best stuff, priced right. I’m still not stalking unwanted VHS tapes at 7 a.m. on a Friday.
