I love garage sales, op-shopping, collectors fairs, swap meets, ebay and gumtree. I am constantly trawling through these places searching for pre-loved treasures. Which means over the years I have amassed a significant collection of treasures/junk (depending on if you ask me or my Hubby).
I never look for anything in particular, I always end up with amazing things I never knew I wanted. LIke last week I found a beautiful vintage blue leather briefcase (with original keys) full of kitchy plastic picnincware, for five dollars! Today I found a gorgeous old wooden and tin toy boat for Mister E’s room at the bargain price of three dollars. I shouldn’t have been looking today as I was at the swap meet selling.
We went through all the boxes of stuff we had packed away in our shed at home and realised we had enough for a garage sale. So yesterday we loaded up the front yard with all our stuff and put up a sign and welcomed random punters into the gates to rummage around. We had a few people arrive at 7.30am before we’d even started to put stuff out. Dealers came in their vans hunting retro games, records and collectables, but left dissaopinted. We had a couple of people pull up, take one look at our stuff and get right back in their cars! I felt slightly hurt that they didn’t stay and look. I had to be the hottest day for months, 41 degrees! So it was a slow trade, but we purged a few boxes of cothes, knick-knacks, homewares and other random goodies (mostly things I have bought at other garage sales!) We made a few hundred dollars by lunchtime and called it a day. This morning we were at the swap meet and all that we had left from the garage sale we sold for a dollar each. Serious bargains to be had at our stall. I have to say, swap meet customers are a stingy bunch. We had a girl ask about a handmade glass bowl, and she turned me down when I asked for a dollar. Seriously. Everything we didn’t sell today got shipped of to Good Sammys, about five boxes, they were very pleased!
Was it worth it? Well it was a novelty the first time, but I won’t be in a hurry to do another one. Not in the peak of Summer anyway. On a nice Spring day it would have been much more pleasurable. One thing I learnt is how to be a ruthless bargainer next time I’m at someone elses garage sale!
