I took a Sabbatical from Substack …

… To stage a four-day garage sale, which made me some unexpected money and gave me material to pass along a few societal observations.

I had five pieces of collector’s fine china from the Bicentennial year, but nobody was interested. I hope Americans still value liberty, freedom and revere our nation’s brave Founding Fathers.

I took a sabbatical from Substack for several days for a reason - I held a four-day garage sale. I cleared $800 in cold, hard cash, but, boy, did I have to work for my money. 

Staging a garage sale gives a social observer like myself a great opportunity to people watch and formulate a few observations about the passing scene. Finding and inventorying old stuff from the garage also provides a trip down Memory Lane.

Garage Sale Back Story …

I decided to clean out the garage because the children of my late next-door neighbor decided to hold a 3-day estate sale/auction.

The company in charge of the Estate Sale did weeks of advance work and placed Estate Sale advertising throughout the area, including putting out signs all over town and at the end of our street.

This made me think, “Heck, I can piggy back on their traffic with my own yard sale.” 

I almost didn’t do it, but an hour before the Estate Sale kicked off, I said, “I’ll do it” … and I started rummaging through my garage, which resembles Fred Samford’s house, and began pulling stuff out onto the driveway.

Quick point: The most important piece of equipment for a garage sale is the leaf blower, which one can use to blow off cobwebs which may have accumulated with the passage of time. (I wish I had a dollar for every customer who asked, “Is the leaf blower for sale?” Answer: No way.)

A few people are interested in silver coins

More than half of my proceeds came not from selling used furniture, books or art work, but from miscellaneous silver coins I decided to sell.

When someone walked up who looked like he might be a coin collector or prepper, I’d ask, “Are you interested in silver coins?”

Over four days, three men were very interested and prompted me to go back in the house and retrieve some more coins. 

About $450 of my $800 came from coins bought by just three people.

Lesson 1: Sometimes you don’t need a large quantity of customers to attend your yard sale, just a few people who are interested in your primo merchandise.

Lesson 2: When LBJ discontinued silver coins in 1965, he told Americans they should not hoard silver coins because they wouldn’t go up in value. Many Americans - who understand a little about inflation and the devaluing of official currency - ignored this government “authorized” advice and are much better off because they did.

Prediction: More people are going to become interested in silver and gold in the months and years to come. While people like me are now called silver or gold “bugs,” I respond, “sticks and stones may hurt your bones, but labels will never hurt me” (even “science denier” or “anti-vaxxer.”) 

What doesn’t sell or has the worst re-sale value:

Books: My wife and I are avid readers and have collected and purchased thousands of books through the decades. A nice hardback book might cost $30 at Amazon or Barnes & Noble. Good luck getting 25 cents for your favorite books at a yard sale.

Pro-tip: Better check with your wife before you sell any of her random books. Apparently, I sold an Ann Patchett novel, which I didn’t think anything about since my wife has all of her books. Of course, the one I sold was one that had been autographed by Ms. Patchett at a book signing my wife attended in Fairhope. Oops!

(To try to make amends, I gave my wife a crisp new $100 bill, which she used for a manicure session for herself and my 12-year-old daughter).

Clothing: I went through my closets and the garage and found many items of very nice clothes - like cashmere sweaters and polo golf shirts that were in “like new” condition.

I got $3 for one cashmere sweater that was still in the plastic and had never been worn. My nicest polo shirts netted me 50 cents. Men’s winter jackets that you couldn’t buy in the store for $100, got between $0 or $3 at my yard sale.

Lamps: My late parents had nice lamps throughout their home, which I was never able to sell at two Estate Sales I staged. These were lamps that must have cost more than $100 in 1978. On the last day of my garage sale, a lady finally bought two of these lamps - for $5.

Original art work - Our family has always been art lovers so we have a house (and garage) full of original oil and watercolor painting and fine art prints - most with fine and expensive frames.

I literally can’t give this art work away. Something tells me my garage sale “market” is not my market. (Maybe if I’d had the same garage sale in, say, the Hamptons or Mountain Brooke, I might have found some takers?)

Several comments from customers stood out …

A family of five walked through the driveway and I asked a teenage boy if he “was a reader.” 

He answered: “No, I’ve never read anything.”

I had two children’s bicycles for sale (which never sold). I asked one girl, who seemed to be about 9, if she had a bike.

She told me, “I’ve never learned to ride a bike.”

I pointed out to one lady that the card table and four chairs I was using to display some of my items was also for sale.

She asked how much: I said, “$40 for all five pieces.”

She told me this was way too high a price … and she was right. I later reduced the price to $20 - with still no takers.

Several years ago my father-in-law gave me a gas grill that is in very good condition. I’ve quit cooking out because the price of steaks and hamburgers are too high, but I saved the grill for a yard sale.

It didn’t sell at $50, then at $40, then at $20. On Sunday, a man bought some clothes for $10 that had probably cost me $500. He was interested in the grill - for $10, but he didn’t have a pick-up truck to haul it off - so I’ve still got that grill.

For some reason, Estate sells and yard sells aren’t as popular as they were 10 years ago.

Four years ago I wrote an article on “inflation work-arounds” where I mentioned yard sales as being very popular as they provide sellers with extra money in times of inflation and they provide buyers an opportunity to buy things for 95 percent less than they’d pay at Wall-Mart or some outlet mall.

I read recently that these sales, for some reason, are no longer as popular (perhaps because people sell their unwanted items on social media?)

I can report that the traffic count at my garage sale - and my neighbors’ giant estate sale - attracted a tiny fraction of the customers that attended two estate sales I once staged.

I enjoyed chatting with customers

It’s fun to talk to customers/browsers at such sales. One comment I heard over and over was that people are trying to get rid of old stuff, not add more stuff. Many people are down-sizing and de-cluttering. Even at cut-rate prices, I think many people are more anxious about spending money. 

Another comment I heard many times was that my neighbor’s estate sale had priced items too high. I won on the price comparison, but in four days - not counting silver - I only sold about $300 in miscellaneous stuff.

Another item everyone wanted to buy was my push lawn-mower, which I rolled out of the garage to display Halloween yard decorations on. I need the lawn mower, but a hinge has come off the automatic drive lever, which means I actually have to push this mower - just like I did in 1982!

One of my customers was a high school classmate who has a lawn care business. He looked at my mower, and told me there’s an easy fix to my mower issue. I just need a 50-cent part from Lawrence Hardware. I wouldn’t have known this if I didn’t have a garage sale and pull out that lawn mower. (For dispensing this potentially heart-attack-preventing advice, I gave my classmate a very nice soap dish.)

The big seller next door was the late Mr. Quattlebaum’s very nice bass fishing boat, which sold at an auction on Saturday for $12,000.

I was happy the boat sold because for days, I listened as mechanics tried to get the 300-horse power outboard engine started.

“They’re never going to get that thing running,” I thought. But someone finally did, which made me feel good that the world still has talented boat engine mechanics who don’t give up until they figure out how to fix something.

I’ve never owned a boat, but from family members and friends, I think there’s wisdom in the saying, “the two happiest days in the life of many men are the days they get their new boat, followed by the day they finally sell the dang thing.”

I noticed a lot of people leaving the Estate sale with old rods and reels owned by the late Mr. Quattlebaum. One of my neighbors also bought some wooden “antique” fishing lures he showed me with pride.

A yard sale can make you remember

special memories from your own life

I remember those lures because my older brother was once an avid fisherman and collected them.

Thinking about my own fishing memories made me think about a time and place where our family spent many happy hours - a private fishing pond 40 miles from Troy in Union Springs. My late grandfather was one of about 10 local residents who had a trailer at the pond, which everyone called “The Pond.”

Rush had no problem catching trophy bass and bream at the pond, but all I ever caught was turtles. Whenever I used Rush’s lures, I got them hung up in trees and pond stumps.

(My late mother, a talented artist, once painted some family portraits depicting everyone as she remembers us at The Pond. Dad is shown grilling out on a charcoal grill with a can of Falstaff beer. Mom painted herself chilling on the front porch in a lawn chair, enjoying a tumbler of scotch with her ever-present can of spider spray next to her. Ten-year-old me is depicted with a rod in my hand with the the fishing line tangled in a tree limb with a turtle on the line.) 

Man, I wish I could find those five family paintings!

While clearing out the garage, I found a box with old photo albums my late mother had saved. I spent an hour looking through these photos, every one of which evokes a specific and priceless memory.

A Muffin Memory …

Several photos were of our peekapoo dog, Muffin, a beloved member of our family from 1972 to 1987.

Muffin had the coloring of miniature sheep dog and stood about eight inches tall and was about a foot long. Just like I’m a city boy who grew up around rural hunters and fishers, Muffin was a domesticated dog who enjoyed her air conditioning and sofas.

Still, Muffin would go with us to our many weekend excursions to The Pond. One time, when I was about 10, my two brothers and I were fishing off the bank at a popular fishing point about 50 yards from my grandparents’ mobile home.

The grass was knee high where we were casting our lines. Suddenly, we heard Muffin growling in a way we’d never heard before. We looked down and little Muffin had a water moccasin in her teeth, which she proceeded to bite in half!

That snake was one foot from me and my brothers and no doubt would have bit one of us if we moved 12 inches.

Another photo in that album shows my seven-year-old little brother, Bobby, proudly displaying a four-pound catfish he caught from that same fishing point.

My late neighbor, Mr. Quattlebaum, will probably smile down from Heaven if another little boy uses one of his rod and reels to catch another big fish one day. In our age of digital photography, few mothers keep scrapbooks, but if they did, that would be a good picture to look back on 50 years in the future.

Anyway, if someone catches a filet-sized bass and wants to cook it, I’ve got a nice gas grill I’ll sell you for $10 … Or just come pick it up. You can have it for free.

***

Note: See Bonus Yard Sale Observations and anecdotes in the Reader Comments. Yard sale comments are welcome.

If someone wants to become a Founding Subscriber, I have five fine china Ridgewood decorative plates from the Bicentennial Year that include beautiful art work of our nation’s Founders, including George Washington. As a thank you gift for any overly generous patron, I’ll ship these pieces with the wall-hanging mounts. My late grandfather bought these and I currently don’t have anywhere to display them. Any art work that depicts our freedom-loving founders is more important than ever.

Many of the silver coins I sold also depict our Founding Fathers and the word “liberty,” an interesting concept to reflect on in today’s increasingly authoritarian times.

Writer gratuities via Ko-Fi.