For Sale

This weekend was our annual neighborhood garage sale. This provides the prime opportunity to watch people heap all their crap on their driveway so that their neighbors can rifle through it, eventually moving some portion of it to their own driveway to be placed on sale at next year's community garage sale. It's one of nature's beautiful cycles.

One of the things I find so intersting about these sales is the need people feel to critique the items which you're in the process of getting rid of. We stopped by one house so that Erin could look at one of these little customized trash cans which allows you to deposit soiled baby diapers without having to breathe the fumes later. After she inspected it and decided not to purchase, another neighbor strolled by and from the sidewalk yelled, somewhat angrily, "You can do the same thing with a normal trash can." He had no interest in the item, and it wasn't as though he were preventing someone from making a $5000 mistake. He just felt the need to gripe for his own satisfaction. Very odd. I also find it interesting that neighbors will angrily argue over the price of items, none of which is more than $5. Nothing creates a sense of contentment and neighborly love like a community garage sale.

This year our addition to the collective pile was a "Thighs of Steel" VCR tape and a large L-shaped computer desk which has followed me through about 50 moves, including one to California and back. It has served me well, but it basically filled one of our bedrooms, so last week we bought and assembled a much smaller desk with the intention of selling the old one for a meager profit at the garage sale. So Saturday morning we lugged the old desk onto the driveway from its resting place in our dining room. And why one "Thighs of Steel" VCR tape, you ask? Good question. Bored at one point with the lack of action in our driveway, I sauntered over for a lecherous glance at the thighs in question on the front of the tape and discovered it was a male's thighs of steel. Why my wife owned this item, she could not explain, but it was a sign of the slowness of our morning that this caused me such disappointment.

Erin's dad and I manned the desk while Erin and her mom went off looking for clothes and toys for Grant. I found this intriguing, given that Grant has more clothes than Ralph Lauren, but what do I know? After a few minutes, Erin returned with a few items, including a handful of CDs.

Now you may be asking why she would be buying me CDs, when I've been selling CDs over the past few years. It all goes back to LaLa. I've been trading CDs on LaLa for the past year, but I've now run out of "trade fodder." Basically I want to keep all the stuff I have, but I'd still like to receive new stuff. So she agreed that a good approach would be to buy CDs for less than a dollar at garage sales, if they were albums that people would want on LaLa. So this garage sale provided my first opportunity to look for "trade fodder."

Along with the handful of CDs, she excitedly informed me that one of our neighbors was selling a couple hundred CDs down the street, and Erin made the call that it seemed like good stuff for LaLa. So Dave and I hopped in the car and started making our plans to pay as little as possible for as many CDs as possible.

Sure enough, the guy had tons of CDs that were all in pristine shape. And on top of it, most of the CDs were of the "best of" variety by big name artists over the past 30 years (The guy had been a DJ in a former life. What a score!) He wanted $1 per CD, but I asked him how much he'd take for the lot. He replied with an uncooperative, "Count them" which garnered an eye roll from his wife, who most assuredly wanted to forget his DJ'ing days and regain the space in her bedroom occupied by the CDs (this is starting to sound familiar.) In my mind, this was a sure sign that he wasn't the bargaining type, but Dave and I had discussed our strategy on the way to his sale. My approach at this point was to simply pull out the CDs I wanted and knew would trade, and then I'd offer him like 80 or 90 cents for each of them. Or, perhaps, I'd say, "Gee, looks like about 200 CDs, I'll give you $180." As I readied my general offer for the lot, Dave immediately began counting and quickly announced that there were "at least 400 CDs here." So I began the selection process.

In the end, I bought 50 or so CDs for $30. Not a bad deal, and they're already trading like mad on LaLa. Erin and her mom ended up buying some clothes and toys, but nothing too huge. Although it was rumored that Deb waited until Dave was mowing in the back yard before unloading her loot from the car. And the desk, you ask? It sat with nary a bit of interest all day. So at about 9pm, as I was just getting ready to cede defeat and move it back into the dining room, a friendly family with a UHaul stopped for a look. They were tough bargainers, and I ended up even helping them heave it into the truck.

Next year we should have tons of our own baby clothes and toys to put out on the driveway. Oh wait, we're having eight kids first. Yes, I'm listening, dear.