Yard Sale People Watching

We had a yard sale last week. Now I think people come down firmly in one camp or the other when it comes to yard sales, they either like them or hate them. I myself have never been one to go to yard sales. I do not like to shop, I hate Mardens, I hate having to pick over items and find what I want.

That said I know that one can find great deals at yard sales. I can remember 25 years ago my roommate at the time and I finding a gaudy blue couch beside the road in the Howard Street section of Bangor and being so thrilled. Our apartment was small, we already had one couch, but we had lots of visitors. My roommates answer, a classic, was to set the couches up back to back like a bus. Those were funny days.

But I digress. So as our attic was full enough to make me have worries over the safety of putting much else up there I said " Wife we cannot put anymore buckets of your clothes up here. " So she finally consented to having a yard sale. I was concerned about the amount of work this would put on her, so for a share of the profits, we hired my youngest son and my daughter to help out. Not the fake help but the real help and they came through admirably.

Observing people is interesting. Now I know that at yard sales it is expected that you bargain. I encouraged my wife to put higher prices on items but her goal, and correctly so, was, now that she had agreed to remove items, was not to put things back in the house when we were done. Still I had to laugh when our first customer at 8 AM on Friday wanted me to go half price on the CD's I was selling. They were already a dollar, and she seemed taken aback when I declined. Apparently I was correct as these CDS all sold very well.

We had a customer that we quoted our book prices at 75 cents who said she had no change and asked my wife if she had fifty cents and my wife said sure and broke the dollar and realized only later that she had been had. It probably made that ladies day however, and we chuckled at her as she drove away in her Lincoln Continental.

Another lady had bought an item for a dollar and paid with a bill. She came back a few minutes later with a fifty cent item and only had a twenty. I told her to just keep it and have it rather than break the twenty. She thanked us. Fifteen minutes later she appeared in front of us again, buying another fifty cent item, and miraculously she had a dollar bill. Interestingly she did not offer to pay for the previous item.

People are funny.

Counterbalancing this however was how good you felt when people who really needed something and were thrilled with their purchases. We had a gentleman who purchased my whole set of Tom Clancy hardcovers for two dollars each. As it came to sixteen I told him fifteen would suffice and he said it was the best deal he ever got. Then the gentleman offered to bring me some books. I, thinking of the books that weigh down every nook and cranny of our house said a little too forcefully, " No that is not necessary."

When I had gone it to get some lunch my wife sold a bunch of my clothes to a fellow who was thrilled and said we tripled his wardrobe, he even came back later to buy more items, wearing my pants no less.

What I discovered is that people are always offering an opportunity for you to learn about human nature.

We made about five hundred dollars. My son and daughter pitched in wonderfully, worked hard, and got along splendidly. Asked about the lack of bickering between the two that sometimes happens between them my son, in anticipation of his earnings said " money makes people act in strange ways. " He is more correct than even he knew when he said it.