Lansing State Journal
By Tricia Bobeda
“How can you get rid of this? This is the best butter dish for Siamese cats.”
A woman waved a beige butter container in the air from the opposite side of the yard.
She continued to extol the virtues of the Tupperware to anyone within earshot at the garage sale. She had this butter dish at home and uses it outsmart her cat, which was apparently Paula Deen in a previous life.
For years she’d come home to find a broken butter dish on her kitchen floor. Now she comes home to an overturned but unopened butter dish and a disgruntled cat.
To her, this was an invaluable item. I was getting rid of it for 50 cents.
Would I take a quarter?
Sure.
In an economic climate where less people have the disposible income for hitting the mall on a Saturday afternoon, garage sales are a chance to find a new movie, necklace or yard tool and only spend the loose change floating around the bottom of your purse or in the car’s ashtray.
It’s working class retail therapy.
Every weekend strangers raise their garage doors, set up card tables, and stick a sign on the closest street corner. It’s an open invitation to browse through their past.
Wedding dress and veil – $25
Cindy Mielock needs a new roof. She was laid off from her job with the state, and needed a way to raise the cash for the home repair. She ran her garage sale for two weekends, selling some of her favorite antique quilts and linens.
”I’m parting with things I didn’t want to,” she said.
An avid quilter, table after table of fabric filled her garage. The sale was better organized than most retail stores, and Mielock hoped the weeks of planning and organizing would encourage shoppers to buy more.
Racks of clothes arranged by size hung across the back. In one corner, laid a garment she only wore once. She didn’t plan on wearing it again. She also didn’t think she’d ever get rid of it. Her cream wedding gown was folded gently in a box, the intricate bead work on the neck line visible. She was also selling her wedding china.
Mielock is more pragmatic than sentimental about selling the items. She’d made almost half the money she needed for her roof by the end of the first weekend and was prepared to list any leftover items on Craigslist or Ebay.
Piano – $800
LaDonna Morales sat in a folding chair in the back of the garage, safe from the scorching midday heat. She and her son surveyed the people milling through the garage. Visible behind them was a weathered antique piano with a neon price tag for $800.
Her son explained the piano was nothing special, it had just been in the family for about 50 years. No one in the house played much anymore. Morales finally piped up.
“Well, that’s not all of it,” she said.
Morales career in music put her on stage with Johnny Cash, Billy Graham and Mike Ditka. She was choir teacher at a school for the blind. She had one elementary student she doled out solos to and loved accompanying on the piano during concerts. Stevie Wonder.
Morales plays accordian, piano and harp. She taught herself as a child, then earned degrees from Michigan State University.
“I discovered early on what I can do best,” she said. “I played a lot.”
Pink Lemonade – 25 cents
“Did you know that some people pay money to cut down trees and harm animals?” The question, scrawled in marker, was flanked by photos of exotic rainforest animals and taped to the miniature picnic table at the edge of the driveway.
The three brothers running the lemonade stand were determined to save the rainforest. Patrick, age 9, and 6-year-old twins Jack and Thomas Haney took turns hooking customers from the sidewalk of the Grosbeck neighborhood’s annual garage sale. They had a colorful cardboard sign and a slide whistle that was going to be sold with a slew of other toys and clothes they’d outgrown.
Realizing it might help draw in business, the whistle left the sale pile. Anything for the cause. The boys said they were raising money for the rainforest because people hunted for the unique animals and they wanted to help them.
“Guys, we made four hundred and 75 cents,” one said.
Cups of lemonade and cookies were 25 cents each, but most customers tipped them over. The money was going to the rainforest, after all. Even the paper cups they used to serve the lemonade had frogs and bugs printed on them. The inventory of homemade chocolate chip cookies were eaten faster than they were sold.
Painting – $20
Rachel Freund decided to move to North Carolina for better weather and more job opportunities. She’d been in her East Lansing home for five years, and was now moving and combining households with someone else. She’d convinced him to get rid of some of his bachelor items, like the poster of a hunting dog that drove her crazy.
“I had to make concessions too,” she said. She was happy to declutter her life, with the exception of a painting leaning against the back wall with a $20 price sticker.
“The painting priced agressively so there’s an excuse to keep it,” she admitted.
The painting, of a little girl and an old man in a row boat, was in Freund’s childhood home.
“It reminds me of my grandfather,” she said. “I’ve just always liked the energy of it.”
Sentimental pricing sticks out at garage sales – there’s usually an item or two that someone fought tooth and nail about when it was suggested it leave the house, and they certainly aren’t willing to sell it for a dollar or two like the rest of the items.
Ice fishing rigs – price negotiable
John Jegla put his ice fishing gear up for sale.
John Jegla caught some monster bass, pike and cat fish with the ice fishing rigs he put in the yard sale. He fishes every winter on Park Lake, where he lives.
“I figure that they’re a lucky rig, so I’m waiting for someone to come to ask me what they are and I’ll hook them,” Jegla said.
He and six other family members joined forces and combined junk to form a massive sale as a part of the Dwight-Lewton neighborhood’s annual sale. All the proceeds would fund their family reunion in August. The sale became a reunion itself, with the family lined up along the inside of the garage, telling stories and making each other belly laugh every few minutes.
Five garage sale tips from an expert saler
Use your radar
Forget using GPS and Google maps for a day of sale-ing. You might want to check the paper for any neighborhood sales, which can offer dozens of sales within walking distance. Beyond that, let instinct and observation be your guide. Follow the signs.
Check three items
The first three items you see will give a good idea of whether it’s a bargain sale or one with a lot of sentimental pricing. The artistry of haggling the price down works better on people who really want to sell the items, not the ones whose spouse watched one too many TLC organizational shows and started decluttering against their will.
Watch for jackpot sales
Once and a while, you’ll happen across a sale where the person has the same taste in clothes as you, kids who are one shoe size ahead of yours, or a favorite author you’ve been dying to make part of your summer reading list. Make sure you’ve got room in the trunk. These opportunities cannot be passed up.
Best times to sale
Friday morning early birds get the pick of the best items before they’re snatched up. Sunday afternoon stragglers get great deals on leftovers, because after a weekend of holding a sale, the last thing people want to do is haul the stuff that didn’t sell back into the house.
First to spot rule
Especially important when sale-ing with friends or relatives, the rule of who gets an item wanted by more than one person – whoever saw it first, gets it. This dibs rule must be abided by.
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