Floor Polishers don't sell at Yard Sales

... Melrose couple's first effort in this down-to-earth marketplace.
by Don Norris

Have you EVER been to a yard sale??!!! Have you ever TAKEN PART in one of these civilian circuses??? It is MADDENING!!!

It is a sketch, a howl, a bunch of fun. But there is lots of work -- heavy work, like carrying lots of stuff a senior shouldn't be carrying.

For instance, we carried back to the cellar, after it was over, twelve large boxes of clothing that hadn't sold. And since my daughter made some hundred and fifty bucks that morning, she must have carried out a lot MORE than those twelve large boxes of clothing.

As for Lorry and me, we cooperatively put in roughly 36 person-hours getting our part of the Sale together, and driving the 90 miles up to her place in New Hampshire. We spent six hours on the battle front, selling, and between the two of us, we grossed $34.

Gas to get there and back, at $1.55 a gallon, was $14. And we had to buy a pack of stick-um stickers for pricing, which was another five bucks. So we netted 18 dollars for 36 hours of work. That's 50 cents an hour!

I'm not complaining. After all it was our daughter's yard sale. And my wife Lorry wanted to lend support, and getting rid of a lot of stuff in our attic seemed like a good idea. That "stuff" filled our grand-mini-van to overflowing.

Joey's success was in selling two lines: One, the out-grown clothing of her two kids, Jeff and Kathryn, now thirteen and nine. And two, all those toys that these two children had been gifted over the past thirteen years -- which created a bright, colorful line of plastic junk 40 feet long, that ranged from a million Little Plastic People to a miniature plastic stove and cupboard that once had been the joy of Kathryn's life. It sold for a couple of dollars, the plastic little people for a quarter at first, then a dime, each.

One rich guy (he arrived in a big new pickup truck) pondered his choice of little people for twenty minutes before offering a dollar for his ten carefully-selected pieces. People are funny.

Some nice lady who lives down the block from Joey kept coming back several times, buying a few toys for her grandchildren on each trip. Her considered thought over what to buy was astounding, but in the end, I believe she was one of the high-rollers, leaving my daughter with some six dollars.

Most of the buyers arrived in older vehicles -- that is, they weren't rich people. The most popular model was pre-1990 Dodge or Plymouth mini-vans -- yes, just like my ten year old model. Most of these vans were jam-packed with parents, kids, and commodities the family had purchased at OTHER yard sales, earlier that morning.

It was this latter group of buyers that put Joey on Easy Street. That is, they spent the most money. The largest bill that morning was about $12, by one family of one male and two females, one of whom was pregnant. They cooperatively had two kids, who lit into the line of toys like a couple of tigers let loose in the petting zoo.

The rich guy, the one from Florida with the big, new shiny red diesel truck -- was on a mission, and was not interested in the toys or the clothing. He did a preliminary scan of the goods and headed for the hardware department. Actually, he wanted to scoop up real, live antiques, which we presume, he would have taken back to Florida and re-sold for a handsome profit. Buy low from the rubes, sell high to the rich folk down in Florida. It's the American way.

However, the oldest item we had available was a 1940s electric floor polisher, which never did sell. No one polishes floors any more. So the rich guy spent maybe 25 minutes on the scene, got back in his idling diesel truck, and rattled away. His bill was a dollar for the ten little plastic people. I'll bet he and his wife hit 15 yard sales that day.

When you think about the good service we did for The People that morning -- providing a really inexpensive source of children's clothing (and toys) -- one should be elevated by the good will. But when I think of how much those clothes cost the original buyer -- parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles -- I wonder if we had been had.

For instance, I sold a hand-held scanner to one young mother, who never dickered over the four dollar price. Now I paid a hundred dollars for that hand-held scanner only a few years ago, but they are in the realm of dinosaurs in this modern electronic age. NO ONE buys a hand-held scanner any more.

I commented to her that she would need a computer to operate the scanner, and she said yes, she had a computer. So I had used that scanner twice, and she got it for a 96 percent discount off its original price. So who wins? Both of us? She gets a useful toy/tool, and I get four bucks that will buy me one Big Mac.

The best part of the Yard Sale was that Lorry and I got to spend the whole day with the grandkids and their mom. That made it all worthwhile.

We came home with maybe eighty percent of the stuff we had carried north. Two days later we delivered it all to the Salvation Army, who got it for free. Including the 1947 floor polisher.

Previously published

August 5, 2000