Yard Sale

The yard sale held by my apartment building went ahead today. It was a beautiful, sunny morning but the tables were set up in the shade and there was a strong wind, so it was pretty darn cold! (sadly, this July has been more like October)

It was $5.00 to rent a table. There were probably at least a dozen vendors. One very innovative family even had such intriguing items as a frame for a windsurfer and an inflatable life raft for sale, which they proceeded to inflate by driving their van up and using an attachment that fit into the cigarette lighter slot! I didn't see anyone leave with the raft while I was there, but I didn't stay to the very end either.

I find yard sale shoppers to be very amusing. No matter how low you price your items, there's always somebody who wants to bargain you down. It's usually the guy who is checking out your gold or electronic items, he's probably some sort of dealer but he always has a reason why he can't pay the full dollar for your item, will you take 50 cents instead? Either he doesn't have any change (even though you can hear a pocketful jingling as he walks) or it's for his kids or he just moved here from some foreign land and doesn't have much money (which would be easier to believe if you hadn't seen the car he drove up in).

Luckily, those kinds of people are balanced by the type like this one little girl that came by my table. She wanted something I had that was priced for 25 cents. I told she could just take it. Her mom said it was okay, she had her own money and she got out her little purse. Then I said, why don't you give me 10 cents for it? The little girl said "But it says 25 cents" and handed me over a quarter. What a sweetheart.

All in all, I made about $15.00. People just didn't seem to be in a buying mood. That's okay, I only stayed two hours and I met some of my nice neighbours. Plus my motto is that anything that goes out for a yard sale doesn't come back in the house, so I'll be making a trip to Value Village tomorrow to donate the leftovers, so that's a couple of boxes of books and stuff that I've cleared out of my apartment. That alone makes it a worthwhile endeavour!!