I'm sure it seemed like a good idea at the time, but the reality of our first garage sale was infinitely more awkward and bizarre than I could have ever expected. The upshot of the experience can be summed up in two words: "never again".
THE POCKET WATCH
By Jeff Dominguez
The Garage Sale
Our garage sale went as well as a garage sale can go, I guess. I've always considered the very idea of my participation in such a thing to be quite distasteful. The idea of standing there in somebody else’s driveway, bartering with them over items about which they once felt strongly enough to pay full price... I just have many other things I'd prefer to do with my Saturday mornings. "Sleeping in", for one thing, comes immediately to mind.
Consequently, my experience with garage sales is fairly limited. Once, when I was in college, I bought a gold medal for the hundred-yard dash and a karate trophy at a garage sale apparently given by an athlete who was, I guess, getting out of the business. Whenever girls came over, I’d bring out the medal and the trophy and place them strategically around my apartment (“That old thing?” I’d say—It worked pretty well for me).
And then there was the time that I was driving through a neighborhood and happened to spot a 30-gallon aquarium for sale at a garage sale. I knew my buddy, Lane, was looking for a fish tank for his little boy, so I pulled over and asked the teenage attendant how much it cost. “You mean how much am I asking?” she replied, as if to correct my garage-sale-speak. She wanted thirty bucks, so I gave her thirty bucks. She seemed eerily delighted with the transaction. I suspected that something might be wrong with the merchandise—either that, or I had stumbled upon the Stepford household’s garage sale—but when I got the tank to Lane’s house, everything checked out okay. That left me wondering why she was so grateful.
Now I know. It’s because I didn’t dicker with her.
I understand this now, because now I’ve hosted my own garage sale. And I’ve learned the international language of the garage sale, the primary two phrases of which are “What are you asking for the (item)?” and “Would you take (amount)?” I’ve learned that the first and foremost rule of the garage sale is that price tags are pointless. And there’s no such thing as a sale price; it’s what you’re “asking for” a given item. And the first price you “ask for” has no integrity whatsoever. It’s simply a diving board into the slimy greenish-brown pool of garage-sale negotiation. Our problem was that we didn’t factor this principle into our original “asking” price. Like fools, we priced items at what we thought was a fair price based on such irrelevant factors as what we had originally paid for them and their current condition.
We found ourselves a bit bloodied and certainly shell-shocked from the early morning negotiations of the profoundly savvy customers who arrived in that first wave on Saturday. It was exactly the kind of situation I had feared when Lisa first uttered that dreaded phrase, “We need to have a garage sale.” The customers were completely indifferent to our original prices, countering immediately with prices of their own—practically before we could finished answering when they’d ask, “How much are you asking for the (item).” These people weren’t just bartering, they were bartering rudely. Our driveway had become a bare-knuckle marketplace, and we were peculiarly made to feel out of place in front of our own home.
However, rather than retreat in the face of desperate odds, we boldly regrouped, and, during the mid-morning lull, we sprang into action. As Lisa quickly removed all of the little price tags we had so carefully affixed to every item in the driveway, I calculated new “asking” prices for all of the merchandise.
The new prices would be based on a simple formula that, as far as I can tell, is subscribed to by all seasoned garage sale veterans. These veterans will shudder at my audacity—in fact, I may never be able to have another garage sale if word of this gets out (tell everyone you know, please)—but, as a public service, I offer the four-point formula here, to help any reader who may be planning a garage sale of his/her own:
1) The garage-sale pros will offer you half of the “asking” price of anything under a dollar, rounded to the nearest twenty-five cents. 2) They’ll subtract a dollar from any “asking” price that’s lower than ten dollars. 3) They’ll round down to the nearest five dollars on any “asking” price in the range of ten to twenty-five dollars. 4) They’ll round down to the nearest twenty-five dollars on any “asking” price over twenty-five dollars. Decide what you want for a given item, factor in this formula, and work backwards to determine your initial “asking” price. It’s that simple.
With the exception of the pricing snafu, the sale went suprisingly well. All the advertising we did for the event was a couple of cardboard signs at the intersection of Rush River and Windbridge, but, believe me, that was enough. We were besieged. We let the customers feel like they won the negotiation, and we got what we wanted for just about everything. In fact, we made several hundred dollars (well, three or four hundred) from stuff that had just been lying around. After an inauspicious start, we had engineered a remarkable comeback. Things went very smoothly the rest of the day—that is, with the exception of one somewhat ugly incident.
Just before lunch, with everything well under control, I managed to slink away, back into the house for a quick snack and an NBA playoff game, when, without warning, down the hall came a loud whisper from my wife.
“Jeff, get out here!” she cried.
“What?” I asked, running down the hall in my socks, alarmed at her strange tone.
She met me at the laundry room. “We’ve got a shoplifter!”
“Who?” I asked as I walked out into the garage, half a sandwich still in my right hand.
“That man,” my wife exclaimed. “The one walking down to the white Cadillac.”
“What did he steal?” I asked, fearing the worst—that he’d made off with my red bowling ball or another of our “big-ticket” items.
“That pair of earrings my mom brought me back from her trip to Arizona,” she blurted.
“The ones with the blue feathers?”
“Yes, the ones with the feathers. I saw him take them with my own eyes—hurry up, he’s getting away!”
I knew her exasperation was based more on the principle of the matter, as opposed to a sense of loss for a pair of earrings she’ll never wear, but I calmly explained to her that it just wasn’t practical for me to tackle a 50-year-old man on the asphalt, lean him up against his Cadillac, and strip search him for a pair of “Dream Catcher” earrings. What would I say? “Excuse me sir, did you steal a pair of earrings from my wife?” or “Alright, buddy, we saw you. Give up the earrings.” He’d laugh at me. Or, worse, he’d sue me. We simply hadn’t established a procedure for this situation.
Still, Lisa was utterly dejected. She’d felt bad enough as it was, selling a gift from her mom (“but we’re a little thin on costume jewelry,” she reasoned as she reluctantly set them out with the other merchandise early that morning). And now she felt victimized, as well. Anyone who’s ever had anything stolen from them will tell you how strangely violated you feel when it happens, what a sickening, empty aftertaste is left in place of whatever it is that was taken.
I searched my heart for a manner in which to offer her a measure of consolation. Finally, I decided that, perhaps if I offered to pay her, myself, for the stolen earrings, she might take some comfort from the gesture, maybe realize a sense of closure to the situation. It seemed to be the least that I could do.
“Look… Lisa… how much were you asking for the earrings?” I inquired.
“A dollar,” she replied, a slight smile of appreciation appearing at the corners of her mouth as she began to realize the kind gesture I was making.
I thought for a moment, put my head down, and reached into my pocket...
“Would you take fifty cents?”
She didn’t talk to me until sometime the following evening.
Jeff Dominguez is a longtime Pocket resident who writes THE POCKET WATCH whenever a worthy topic occurs to him (roughly once a month). Call him at 393-8300 or e-mail him at jeff.dominguez@yahoo.com.
By Jeff Dominguez
The Garage Sale
Our garage sale went as well as a garage sale can go, I guess. I've always considered the very idea of my participation in such a thing to be quite distasteful. The idea of standing there in somebody else’s driveway, bartering with them over items about which they once felt strongly enough to pay full price... I just have many other things I'd prefer to do with my Saturday mornings. "Sleeping in", for one thing, comes immediately to mind.
Consequently, my experience with garage sales is fairly limited. Once, when I was in college, I bought a gold medal for the hundred-yard dash and a karate trophy at a garage sale apparently given by an athlete who was, I guess, getting out of the business. Whenever girls came over, I’d bring out the medal and the trophy and place them strategically around my apartment (“That old thing?” I’d say—It worked pretty well for me).
And then there was the time that I was driving through a neighborhood and happened to spot a 30-gallon aquarium for sale at a garage sale. I knew my buddy, Lane, was looking for a fish tank for his little boy, so I pulled over and asked the teenage attendant how much it cost. “You mean how much am I asking?” she replied, as if to correct my garage-sale-speak. She wanted thirty bucks, so I gave her thirty bucks. She seemed eerily delighted with the transaction. I suspected that something might be wrong with the merchandise—either that, or I had stumbled upon the Stepford household’s garage sale—but when I got the tank to Lane’s house, everything checked out okay. That left me wondering why she was so grateful.
Now I know. It’s because I didn’t dicker with her.
I understand this now, because now I’ve hosted my own garage sale. And I’ve learned the international language of the garage sale, the primary two phrases of which are “What are you asking for the (item)?” and “Would you take (amount)?” I’ve learned that the first and foremost rule of the garage sale is that price tags are pointless. And there’s no such thing as a sale price; it’s what you’re “asking for” a given item. And the first price you “ask for” has no integrity whatsoever. It’s simply a diving board into the slimy greenish-brown pool of garage-sale negotiation. Our problem was that we didn’t factor this principle into our original “asking” price. Like fools, we priced items at what we thought was a fair price based on such irrelevant factors as what we had originally paid for them and their current condition.
We found ourselves a bit bloodied and certainly shell-shocked from the early morning negotiations of the profoundly savvy customers who arrived in that first wave on Saturday. It was exactly the kind of situation I had feared when Lisa first uttered that dreaded phrase, “We need to have a garage sale.” The customers were completely indifferent to our original prices, countering immediately with prices of their own—practically before we could finished answering when they’d ask, “How much are you asking for the (item).” These people weren’t just bartering, they were bartering rudely. Our driveway had become a bare-knuckle marketplace, and we were peculiarly made to feel out of place in front of our own home.
However, rather than retreat in the face of desperate odds, we boldly regrouped, and, during the mid-morning lull, we sprang into action. As Lisa quickly removed all of the little price tags we had so carefully affixed to every item in the driveway, I calculated new “asking” prices for all of the merchandise.
The new prices would be based on a simple formula that, as far as I can tell, is subscribed to by all seasoned garage sale veterans. These veterans will shudder at my audacity—in fact, I may never be able to have another garage sale if word of this gets out (tell everyone you know, please)—but, as a public service, I offer the four-point formula here, to help any reader who may be planning a garage sale of his/her own:
1) The garage-sale pros will offer you half of the “asking” price of anything under a dollar, rounded to the nearest twenty-five cents. 2) They’ll subtract a dollar from any “asking” price that’s lower than ten dollars. 3) They’ll round down to the nearest five dollars on any “asking” price in the range of ten to twenty-five dollars. 4) They’ll round down to the nearest twenty-five dollars on any “asking” price over twenty-five dollars. Decide what you want for a given item, factor in this formula, and work backwards to determine your initial “asking” price. It’s that simple.
With the exception of the pricing snafu, the sale went suprisingly well. All the advertising we did for the event was a couple of cardboard signs at the intersection of Rush River and Windbridge, but, believe me, that was enough. We were besieged. We let the customers feel like they won the negotiation, and we got what we wanted for just about everything. In fact, we made several hundred dollars (well, three or four hundred) from stuff that had just been lying around. After an inauspicious start, we had engineered a remarkable comeback. Things went very smoothly the rest of the day—that is, with the exception of one somewhat ugly incident.
Just before lunch, with everything well under control, I managed to slink away, back into the house for a quick snack and an NBA playoff game, when, without warning, down the hall came a loud whisper from my wife.
“Jeff, get out here!” she cried.
“What?” I asked, running down the hall in my socks, alarmed at her strange tone.
She met me at the laundry room. “We’ve got a shoplifter!”
“Who?” I asked as I walked out into the garage, half a sandwich still in my right hand.
“That man,” my wife exclaimed. “The one walking down to the white Cadillac.”
“What did he steal?” I asked, fearing the worst—that he’d made off with my red bowling ball or another of our “big-ticket” items.
“That pair of earrings my mom brought me back from her trip to Arizona,” she blurted.
“The ones with the blue feathers?”
“Yes, the ones with the feathers. I saw him take them with my own eyes—hurry up, he’s getting away!”
I knew her exasperation was based more on the principle of the matter, as opposed to a sense of loss for a pair of earrings she’ll never wear, but I calmly explained to her that it just wasn’t practical for me to tackle a 50-year-old man on the asphalt, lean him up against his Cadillac, and strip search him for a pair of “Dream Catcher” earrings. What would I say? “Excuse me sir, did you steal a pair of earrings from my wife?” or “Alright, buddy, we saw you. Give up the earrings.” He’d laugh at me. Or, worse, he’d sue me. We simply hadn’t established a procedure for this situation.
Still, Lisa was utterly dejected. She’d felt bad enough as it was, selling a gift from her mom (“but we’re a little thin on costume jewelry,” she reasoned as she reluctantly set them out with the other merchandise early that morning). And now she felt victimized, as well. Anyone who’s ever had anything stolen from them will tell you how strangely violated you feel when it happens, what a sickening, empty aftertaste is left in place of whatever it is that was taken.
I searched my heart for a manner in which to offer her a measure of consolation. Finally, I decided that, perhaps if I offered to pay her, myself, for the stolen earrings, she might take some comfort from the gesture, maybe realize a sense of closure to the situation. It seemed to be the least that I could do.
“Look… Lisa… how much were you asking for the earrings?” I inquired.
“A dollar,” she replied, a slight smile of appreciation appearing at the corners of her mouth as she began to realize the kind gesture I was making.
I thought for a moment, put my head down, and reached into my pocket...
“Would you take fifty cents?”
She didn’t talk to me until sometime the following evening.
Jeff Dominguez is a longtime Pocket resident who writes THE POCKET WATCH whenever a worthy topic occurs to him (roughly once a month). Call him at 393-8300 or e-mail him at jeff.dominguez@yahoo.com.
