Nine yard sale tricks you probably already know (but what the hey)

Yard sale shoppers don't leave home without their bag of tricks.  Add these (or remember that you had them in the first place!) …

After a wet May, Memorial Day weekend dried up enough that people rolled things out on their driveway for yard sales.  Two of them were in our subdivision, so it would have been silly to miss those.

Each sale is unique, just like each family running the yard sale is unique.  Each sale has its own flavor and its own deals (or lack thereof), so each presents its own challenges and fun.

Yard sale tricks you've probably heard of but why not

Here are a few tricks we used at this past weekend's yard sales to help us get some great deals:

• Work in pairs.  (A spouse is a good choice to pair up with.  Even better is your spouse if you have one.)  When there's only a couple of sales in the area, or few enough that it's not as important to cover a lot of ground, working in pairs at a single sale offers a number of advantages.  Another set of eyes on the goods gives better coverage.  And when negotiating, tag-teaming can be helpful.
• Keep it quiet.  Everyone at a yard sale, regardless of how pleasant they are, is looking for a deal.  If you need to check whether something is a good deal or not, do so quietly.  No reasons to tip your hand to other yard salers.
• Pick things up you're interested in.  I guess doing this as soon as you see something that interests you tips your hand to the seller, but it also keeps the item out of the hands of other potential buyers.  I saw a pair of like-new Promark 7A hickory drumsticks at a very nice price, and they went right into my hand as soon as I saw them.  (“Mine!”)
• Factor in the cost of the container.  Plastic storage boxes for little crafty things don't run cheap.  Even no-frills boxes like these are a few bucks apiece.  I tend to pick these up when I see them because the empty container is a deal at whatever price they have on the item.  Then there's whatever stuff was inside, which is a bonus.
• Consider alternative uses.  My wife loves picking up odd pieces of wood for projects.  The first sale we went to had a disassembled entertainment center.  The seller was asking $40 for it but it was missing hardware, and one of the pieces was broken.  But this was a solid wood entertainment center, not a particle board one.  The wood was nice, and had beautiful grain in it.  We offered her $10 and mentioned that we'd probably use it for projects instead of as an entertainment center.  The seller held off a bit but eventually sold it to us for that price.  (Later my wife told me that if she were to buy that wood new, one shelf would have cost more than $10.  And there were eight shelves in there, plus some longer pieces!)
• Make aggressive deals on big items.  I suggested the $10 price on the disassembled entertainment center (after the seller offered $40).  It was taking up a lot of space.  I'm convinced that part of the reason they accepted our low offer was that they wanted to free up the space.  The thought of hauling that to the dump, or back into their garage, was worth selling it for $10.
• Watch fabric and related craft items.  I made the mistake one time of buying a lot of fabric from someone for $40.  It was several bags worth of fabric.  My wife ended up giving most of it away because it wasn't the quality she used for her projects.  We passed up a box of thread because my wife said that it was old, which doesn't help thread.
• Buy CDs?  The second sale we went to had a box of CDs.  You know: compact discs, those coaster-like shiny round things that people used to buy music on.  A number of years ago (2011), I wrote about whether we want to own media or not anymore, and how I was a bit of an oddball because I still had a substantial CD collection.  But, here's the thing:  I'm not really adding to it anymore.  I can listen to just about anything I'd need to on YouTube.  So, I left that box of CDs where they were.
• Don't carry stuff home if you can load the stuff in a vehicle.  We walked to the first yard sale from our home, and I walked back with a whole load of stuff to get the van to load up the entertainment center.  Why on earth did I do that to myself?!  I could have left the stuff we had bought there, and walked home without carrying a large box of stuff.  (Anyway:  Don't do what I did.  Don't be John.  Be yourself.  Because you're awesome.)