Garage Sale Magic!: How to Turn Your 'Trash' into Cash

by Pam Williams, Michael Williams

Discusses the mechanics of turning "trash into cash," explains how to advertise and price a garage sale, and examines the counter culture of rummage, garage, and yard sales

94 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 1994

Reviews

[Angela · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was written 15 years ago, so I don't know how much to trust it. The authors claim they run a garage sale every year and have never made less than $2,500, but they do many things differently than the average person: they run the sale 9-5 Fri-Sun, they advertise, they take care to clean all the items and present them nicely, they take consignment furniture and such from friends and family. If this is what it takes to get the most out of a garage sale, that's good to know--but I'm curious as to how and how much this "industry" has been affected by eBay. I know customers are still out there, if largely people who want to re-sell on eBay. There is a perception that garage sale prices are lower (or should be) than eBay prices. Some pricing guidelines included here: for furniture and items of real value, price them 75% less than the equivalent item new in a store (less for things like stereos that are out of date); nicer clothing they sold for $5-20, less nice stuff for $1.50-$3.00.

One thing that was counter to my guess was that I had thought it would be good to include neighbors, for more attractive advertising ("multi-household", "block-long", or whatever). But they reminded me that's just more competition for customers' dollars (especially since we're near the end of the block, on a one-way street).