The Garage Sale Gal’s Guide to Making Money Off Your Stuff

My First Garage SaleI was a garage-sale snob. The thought of rummaging through or buying something used by someone else was . . . well, icky, and certainly not my idea of fun. Now, don”t get me wrong, I love to shop. But back then the closest I got to “icky” was sticky when I spilled part of my tall, non-fat, triple-shot latte on my Neiman”s credit card while I was on a spending spree. Buying things from someone”s driveway with-gasp-hand-me-downs hanging from a makeshift clothesline suspended between a mailbox and a porch railing wasn”t even on my radar.

It was in Salina, a town right smack in the middle of Kansas, back in 1992, when something profound happened. I went to my first garage sale. I was visiting relatives and they dragged me along. My sister-in-law, Colleen, and her mother, Kathleen, are lifelong garage sale enthusiasts and search for treasures any chance they get.

I remember everything about that beautiful spring day. It was the kind of day where the sky was blue, there wasn”t a cloud in sight, and the cold winter air was giving way to warmer temperatures. We made a turn into an upscale neighborhood where a sign pointed to a sale. Before the car stopped I saw it. Although its finish was dull, it glistened in the sunshine and beckoned me. “It” was a big old copper boiler, the kind your grandma might have used for cooking and cleaning. I could just picture it spicing up a bare spot in my kitchen.

And that”s when it happened. I, a bargain-buying snob, negotiated my first garage sale purchase. I might have been green at this garage sale stuff, but I wasn”t shy. The man wanted $50, but I talked him down to $30. He said he wasn”t sure why he was selling it, that it had been his grandmother”s, and he had always loved that copper boiler. He nearly talked himself out of selling it to me. But I gave him the money and he took it, though a bit reluctantly. I walked away excitedly because I had just purchased my first garage sale item. But I also felt a little guilty that I had taken his precious childhood memory-so I walked faster! I was hooked.